UK number two in RFID market

The UK is second only to the US in its adoption of RFID, according to a global study of the technology’s take-up.

Consultancy IDTechEx’s study Hot Countries for RFID reveals that the UK holds second place by quantity, although not by money spent, where China lays claim to the number two spot.

But the gap between the number one and two spot is huge - the US had over 800 RFID implementations, while the UK has under 300.

Apart from being the greatest adopter with the largest number of cases of RFID in action, orders in the US are often the world’s largest by value.

Peter Harrop, chairman of IDTechEx, said: ‘The reason why the UK is so high up the league by number of cases is because we’ve got the largest city in Europe with 7.2 million Oyster cards and in the round we are doing a bit of everything from healthcare, where babies and mums are tagged, to leisure applications, such as tagging runner's shoes in marathons.’

'Our military force is also bigger than any other in Europe and we are using RFID to tag vehicles, trailers and missiles, or anything with a value of over £3,000,' he said.

Although the UK lags in terms of money spent, this could all change for the wrong reasons if the UK adopts a national identity card scheme based on RFID technology, says Harrop.

‘Considering China’s national identification card scheme is going to cost $6bn by 2008 and they have 900 million people to tag, the UK is talking about a $15bn scheme and planning for an over-spend for only 60 million people which is poor value for money. We could become the biggest spender or number two to the US because of spending money on RFID like drunken sailors,’ he said.

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