Friday, July 14, 2006

Physical World Happening Faster Than Most Realize

Some call it the "Internet of Things" and I have referred to it as Physical World Connection or Phase 2.

Either way, IDTechEx says it's happening faster than most realize.

Item level tagging is happening faster than most realize - 200 million tags will be used in 2006 for item level tagging alone - mainly apparel, books and drugs to name a few applications.

From 2007 it will be the world's largest RFID market by value, rising to a value of $11 billion for tags and all systems of a $26 billion RFID market in 2016.


To get a sense of how big and what this is, every time you see a hyperlink on your screen today, imagine if you had to type that long web address instead to get there.

We take hyperlinks for granted.

Now imagine that every physical object you see, can and will have a physical world hyperlink on it or in it, and provide a link to the Internet. There will be trillions of these unique hyperlinks, all that we need is a physical world browser .

Longer term, the technology to achieve item level tagging will most likely not be chip based.

To reach the critical low price points of the tag required for the item level tagging of the highest volume items - such as documents and most products, technologies such as printed thin film transistor circuits, printed electronics and Surface Acoustic Wave Devices (SAW) are all suitors
.

Click here for the table of industries and spplications.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

In your blog Thursday:
Goverment Implements PWC for Drugs

you refered to a "u-Chip".

Does this "u-Chip" fit into todays blog? And, does it compete with or compliment the "SAW" you say is a suitor?

No Name said...

The "u" chip is ANOTHER type of physical world hyperlink.

It will compliment the SAW RFID tag.


Start thinking of these various RFID tags as barcodes on steriods.

However, not all RFID tags will be in a universal database.

Stay tuned, I have identified a variety of RFID tags that will play a role in the Internet of Things.

Anonymous said...

Scott, Isn't it time to make a clear division between all the different RFID standards and its usage. There is a lot of confusion.....

No Name said...

When I get some time, I will post the major RFID tags and their pros/cons.

The main issues right now for RFID are a "standard" and the environments which a tag operates in.

Those present some great opportunities for the companies that can provide the solution to both.

There is a much bigger market than tagging every DVD player because WalMart says so.

In my opinion, the opportunity for RF is creating "closed" network solutions using non-standard 915 tags.