Five Years Forward : Five Years Back

Just a bit of personal musing this week. A student sent me an email asking for input to their project on what's going on in RFID and, in best interview style, one of the questions was, "Where do you see RFID in five years time?"

Interestingly, it's more or less five years since I first got involved in RFID and while there have been some technical changes, its also interesting to see what hasn't changed. So, here is my take on the top 5 things that have changed and top 5 things that haven't changed in the past 5 years....

What does it mean for the next five years? Maybe I'll speculate on that in another post.

Changes.

1. Growth in the use and variety of UHF tags. Much more specialisation in tag types.

2. The beginning of NFC as a widely used technology for payments, ticketing and consumer initiatives.

3. The growth of standards from GS1 and EPC Global which has been responsible in part for (1) and will be even more important in the future.

4. Enormous growth in the supply side with manufacturers / vendors appearing every few weeks in both the tag and reader areas. Its getting harder than ever to spot the reliable ones.

5. Greater involvement of user groups and some evidence of cross-industry initiatives. Although most solutions seem to be focussed on point applications there are encouraging signs of multi-user solutions. Five years ago it was just Walmart and DoD who were pioneering.

Stasis

1. The physics of RFID - it's still getting in the way (& of course always will)

2. User misunderstanding. Greater access to the technology hasn't improved understanding of what can and cannot work or how to run a successful project.

3. The wide spread use of high frequency and low frequency RFID. Plenty of people were telling me it was dead five years ago. It's still alive and kicking.

4. Lack of good IT infrastructure for RFID based projects. It's all still hand crafted.

5. Enthusiasm. The industry seems as keen to innovate and progress as it was in 2007. Users are still intrigued by the potential for RFID.