The worldwide radio frequency ID market will top $7bn by 2008, research has predicted. Independent analyst IDTechEx said that global sales of RFID equipment are growing steadily as technical problems are slowly overcome.

Some 6.8 billion tags will be sold in 2008 for applications including medicines, luggage, animals, books and tickets. In addition some 15.3 billion tags are expected to be added to pallets and cases.

The IDTechEx report predicts that, by 2010, almost half of RFID tags will be sold in East Asia, followed by 32 per cent in the US.

In 2010, some 15 per cent of all tags are expected to be chip-less, such as printed thin-film transistor circuits and surface acoustic wave devices, rising to 55 per cent in 2013 as tags costing less than five cents become ubiquitous.