The future of RFID is looking bright., according to a report from IDTechEx
Despite some challenges that are not yet resolved, such as the global macroeconomic downturn and chip and other raw material shortages, the global RFID market is expected to expand further in 2023; according to IDTechEx.
The market will be worth $14 billion in 2023, up from US$12.8 billion in 2022.
This comprises RFID labels, cards, fobs, and any other form factors, tags, readers, and software/services for passive and active RFID.
In the UHF sector, the retail business, the largest RFID application sector in terms of tag numbers, adopting RFID continues to grow strongly.
According to the study, retail apparel alone will require nearly 24 billion RFID labels in 2023 - though there is still some way to go, with RFID accounting for only about 30% of the total addressable market for apparel.
Furthermore, IDTechEx anticipates that more retail products other than apparel will be tagged in the future years. Walmart's mandate on tagging retail items other than apparel is anticipated to generate significant volume growth for the sector.
Contactless card sales remain the most successful in the HF sector, driven primarily by contactless payment, transit, and secure access applications, with 3.1 billion cards anticipated to be demanded in 2023.
Overall, IDTechEx forecasts that 39.3 billion passive RFID tags will be sold in 2023, up from 33 billion in 2022, indicating a 20% year-on-year increase. The bulk of this growth is due to passive UHF RFID labels.
However, in 2023, UHF (RAIN RFID) tag sales by value will be just 40% of HF tag sales (including NFC), due to the higher price point of HF tags used for security (such as payments, access, etc) against the cheaper, largely disposable UHF (RAIN) tags used for tagging items.
