AutoID & Data Capture Blog

The market for EPC RFID hardware exceeded $354 Million in 2010, an increase of more than 140% over 2009.  We anticipate that the market will continue to experience rapid growth in 2011, with global revenues growing more than 104% (over 2010).

The following are a couple of additional highlights on the EPC RFID hardware market:

• More than 1.6 Billion tags were shipped in 2010; a number expected to exceed 4 Billion in 2011 … and retail accounted for about 50%.  There are several emerging markets that will account for increasingly higher volumes over the next few years, such as AVI, EVR, Asset Tracking, People Tracking/Management, Authentication (to name a few).
• Reader volumes increased more than 75% in 2010 and are anticipated to grow approximately 60% this year; however, large orders that drove significant growth in 2010 (e.g., Wal-Mart) are not expected to be a common occurrence.
• Although significant tagging and infrastructure deployment is occurring within the retail environment, end users are indicating that the point of tagging – mainly done in-store or 1 step removed from the store – will be shifting further down the value chain.  This will mean that tagging-related revenues will most likely be a shifting toward the Transportation and Manufacturing markets as value chains and solutions continue to evolve.  VDC expects this shift to begin occurring as early as Q4 2012.