The RFID tag cost is further lower. Statistics show that global UHF RFID tag shipments last year were between 7 billion and 9 billion, and is expected to grow by 30% this year. As China’s largest economy in the Asia-Pacific region, the demand for RFID in the retail market has shown great power. Only the Harish House, La Chappelle, Mistitle, Inman, Mark Huafei, Fu Anna, etc. represent the RFID tags for apparel retail applications. The demand has been spurred.
Due to different applications, the label requirements are different, and the RFID tags cost have a huge different. The dry inlay RFID tag cost of an ordinary aluminum etched antenna can be done for a few cents, but the higher protection level or the more complicated process of the electronic label is more expensive. Unmanned supermarkets are more conventional label, and the general RFID tag cost is not high.
This year, for the entire RFID industry, it can still be described as the heat of the majority, and a few are struggling. Following the large-scale apparel retail applications, the rise of unmanned retail has led to a new round of RFID technology innovation and application. Readers, RFID tags and system integration solutions companies are investing in technology research and development this year. At the same time, a small number of NFC companies looking forward to mobile payment applications may have complained because of the continued strength of the QR code.
RFID industry application speed is obvious.
Looking at the RFID market structure this year, there are two obvious growth points: First, the application of RFID in the apparel field continues to expand, and large-scale application projects such as Harish Home, Lexie, and UR have increased the label usage; Under the investment and financing boom of unmanned retail, RFID companies actively participated in the competition and cooperated to launch a variety of RFID tag products and system solutions, and have begun to land.
RFIDHY is a leading integrated solution provider for RFID tag antennas, RFID
tags and smart retail devices in China. It is also one of the few companies in
China that can compete directly with similar foreign companies in the RFID
market in the industrialized countries of Europe and the United States.
Domestic small-scale electronic label companies are still dominated by overseas
markets. However, Lin Jialiang, general manager of Xminnov Information
Technology Co., Ltd. said: “The overall market in China this year is better
than expected at the beginning of the year. From the perspective of project
demand, RFID has traditional advantages in logistics, warehousing, asset
management, clothing retail, and smart manufacturing. The phenomenon of
acceleration.” Lin Jialiang believes that this is due to the positive impact of
domestic macroeconomic policies and the necessary result of the transformation
and upgrading of traditional enterprises.
Looking back at this year’s hottest RFID application – unmanned retail, has
become one of the main battlefields of the RFID industry this year. However,
industry experts generally believe that the high cost of RFID is still a major
obstacle to this application; gratifyingly, RFID is currently the most mature
unmanned retail technology, and its most powerful competitor AI image
recognition remains technically mature.
According to Alex Xing, an RFID technology consultant at RFIDHY, RFID may be a
“perfect” transition for unmanned retail applications, but at the same time the
company has earned a market reputation for itself; and RFID is used in the
unmanned retail sector. How far can you go, perhaps by the end of 2019? It is
reported that XMINNOV has successfully developed a high-performance UHF
electronic label suitable for direct application on the surface of liquid
packaging, and has reached a strategic cooperation with Zonke Traceability,
respectively in U.S. Ai Wisdom Store and Yu Shunhong RFID vending cabinet have
carried out the scene measurement, no matter from the reading of single items
or batch reading and writing, it has fully adapted to the actual application
needs.
The price is further lower, the cost advantage is lower
Some end users have said in an interview that although there have been more and more customized labels in the past two years, the quality is not uniform, and the prices are also different. There are many confusions during the purchase. In this regard, Lin Jialiang said that in general, electronic tags should be used as industrial consumables in the system, and the price is also inevitable. Every electronic label company should think more about how to make its own added value.
Luo Panxian revealed that the current RFID tags cost decline of RFID has exceeded the increase rate of its usage. This imbalance will damage the overall interests of RFID companies. Therefore, from the perspective of hardware product suppliers, he hopes that enterprises should not excessive fight on the price.
Yang Tianrong, general manager of Shenzhen Songhe Yunlian Technology Co., Ltd. said that because the RFID industry has shown obvious acceleration this year, unmanned supermarkets and unmanned containers have driven the expansion of the passive RFID market, and indoor positioning demand and wireless sensor networks have driven active RFID. The market is growing rapidly, and at the same time this year’s RFID products have shifted from price competition to price/performance competition.
In summary, the RFID tags cost in 2019, whether it is a label or a reader, we have seen a certain degree of looseness, and the customer acceptance reflected in the industry application has also been greatly improved.
Where is the potential of the RFID market in 2019?
Judging from the overall industrial situation, the booming development of the Internet of Things will inevitably bring a large number of RFID application opportunities. How to prepare for the enterprise and realize the explosive growth of the whole industry is a hot spot for the industry. Many people believe that it is an effective way for enterprises to make clear self-positioning in advance. Especially when the scale of enterprises in the RFID industry is small, the development path of individualization and customization has been widely recognized.
We have seen that although RFID unmanned retail has become a hot topic at present, the fact that shipments in the field of RFID has not been astonishing. In Yang Tianrong’s view, the active product market is likely to have a significant improvement in personnel positioning and asset and production line applications. The integration of local applications and wide-area fields will be a great opportunity, NB-IoT, BLE and active RFID. The combination will be a great opportunity!
Li Xuewen also believes that unmanned retail has become or is becoming a popular application for RFID. Unmanned supermarkets, unmanned convenience stores, unmanned refrigerators, and unmanned sales containers will bring a high speed to RFID regardless of the final form. The opportunity for growth. However, he further stated that Honglu technology is more focused on the development of smart industry next year than on the hope of unmanned retail, and has already prepared for the war.
In the current industry application everywhere, the company’s enthusiasm is high, Luo Panxian suggested: “In addition to mutual competition, the RFID industry should be united to serve downstream enterprise users. In the long run, it must be solved through technological progress. According to Luo Panxian, Handed Hall has received a lot of project enquiries that need to be completed in the coming year, and it has a larger growth in size and quantity than this year.
