EU: Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID)

Why this conference?The EU RFID Conference 2006 âHeading for the Futureâ closes the series of radio frequency identification (RFID) consultations launched by Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, at CeBIT 2006. Why is RFID on the European Commissionâs agenda?The Commission considers RFID as an emerging technology that has great potential for many economic operators in Europe as well as for Europe's citizens. Few new technologies have triggered so much attention from businesses, consumer organisations, data protection experts and politicians around the world as RFID Devices. The place taken by RFID in the public debate today largely derives from the fact that this technology is currently moving rapidly from the research lab to mass applications in a similar way to GSM mobile phones in the 1990s.The RFID market is expected to grow rapidly over the next ten years. Cumulative sales worldwide of RFID tags for 60 years since their invention until the beginning of 2006 amount to 2.4 billion, with 600 million tags being sold in 2005 alone! The number of tags delivered in 2016 could be over 450 times the number delivered in 2006. If the main technical and economic challenges are resolved in the near future (e.g., yield vs. cost, frequency acceptance, required performance levels), the global RFID market might grow exponentially to be almost ten times the size in 2016 that it will be this year â the value of the total market, including systems and services, could reach 20.8 billion euro in 2016 from 2.2 billion euro in 2006. In Europe, RFID take-up growth for the next seven years is expected to be significant in the number of tags (by a factor of 6), the number of readers (by a factor of 15), and the number of locations (by a factor of 15). Yet the European RFID market is currently growing slower than the worldwide market. The deployment of RFID technology should make a major contribution to growth and jobs. Furthermore, RFID implementations are expected to become a source of new business models and a creator of high-tech quality jobs.At the same time, research must be pursued to build and maintain Europeâs lead in next-generation RFID technology and its applications. The Commission also expects RFID to be the forerunner of many increasingly âintelligentâ objects that interact with each other and help humans in ever more sophisticated ways. Full report at link below

Author: European Commission

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