RFID becoming billion-dollar market

The market for RFID semiconductors is set to be worth $2.3bn by 2010, driven by retail use of the tagging technology and volume applications.

The figure comes from Future Horizons, which puts the use of RFID (radio frequency ID technology) at an already healthy level of $900m last year. RFID tags can be read wirelessly at short distances as a way of communicating small amounts of data.

The market analyst notes the market for barcode replacement and other types of retail, financial and personal labelling will be where the market eventually explodes but that in the meantime, applications such as prisoner-, animal- and postal-tagging are more advanced.

Key retailers such as M&S, Tesco and, in particular, Wal-Mart of the US are pushing ahead with roll outs that will end up affecting thousands of suppliers. So too is the US Department of Defense.

For a full silicon.com Cheat Sheet on RFID, click here.

In separate news, Philips today announced it is the first manufacturer to make available an RFID chip that adheres to new worldwide regulations on interoperability.