Where is the opportunity to excavate the RFID gold mine? (2005-02-02 15:15) (Song Baoqiang) (Tianji Net)
Guide - By 2009, the sales revenue of the global RF identification label increased from $ 300 million in 2004 to $ 2.8 billion.
Tianji.com (Reporter Song Baoqiang) In 2004, the world's famous retailer Wal-Mart requires that all of the 100 suppliers have been shipped to Wal-Mart after January 2005 must be added with RFID (Wireless RF Identification Technology). "Label", a small supplier also implements this policy in 2006. At the same time, with the international RFID technology standard ISO / IEC8000 promotion and EPC (product electronic code) standard, the domestic industry focuses on the technical function of RFID to the commercial market.
RFID is how big gold mine
The famous consulting firm said in its 2005 Telecom Industry Prospect: "2005 RFID will eventually go out of the laboratory, enter the business sector ... At the end of this year, there will be more than 10 billion RFID tags to be sold and put into use."
The latest research report on the high-tech market research company in-STAT is more known that RFID will become the most popular wireless technology since the mobile phone. By 2009, the sales revenue of the Global RF Identification label increased from $ 3.8 billion in 2004 to $ 2.8 billion.
However, there should be more market opportunities in RFID in China. RFID technology has great promoted role in achieving automation and real-time monitoring of logistics and supply chain management. As the world's manufacturing factories, China should have the most favorable advantage. For example, 70% of Wal-Mart goods are from China.
At present, China has published a number of national development plans based on RFID technology. For example, Chinese citizens will start using RFID technologies in the future, which means adding more than 100 billion cards that enable RFID functionality. At the same time, the Chinese government also plans to integrate all daily card issues, such as bank cards, driver's license, credit card, etc. to a card.
In the Chinese market, the RFID standard (spectrum unparalleled) and high cost of the RFID chip have a large-scale application of RFID.
China Standard lacks obstruction
The absence of China's RFID standards makes the entire industry in-depth technology research and development and production investment, which restricts the development of the entire industry. Xie Ying, secretary-general of China Automation Association, revealed that the spectrum in the RFID standard involves other application departments such as broadcasting, and is currently undergoing related experiments. Overall technology, China has not had too many gaps in RFID, although the chip industry manufacturing capacity is large in China and Western gaps.
China's RFID standard is based on the RFID International Standard ISO / IEC8000, this standard is also the reference foundation of the International RFID International Standard System. Xie Ying said that RFID China's standards are based on China's national conditions to make international standards and some details, fundamentally compliance with international standards. China's RFID standard is mainly due to immature related to China's related industries.
Xie Ying believes that it is difficult to formulate national standards without industrial basis. China's related industrial chains are not mature enough, rare participants, lack of industrial application stimulation and promotion is a major obstacle to constraints of RFID-related standards.
Zhang Chenghai, deputy director of China IP Coding Center, believes that only after the basic issue like the standard is resolved, EPC and RFID applications can develop rapidly, and avalanche growth. He predicts that there are at least 3 to 5 years of time, or longer in China's RFID market.
Cost is a bottleneck for large-scale applications
In the 1990s, China's export commodities had no barcodes in foreign markets and were rejected. That is to start at that time, China's bar code technology has developed rapidly. Similarly, with the international retail giants such as Wal-Mart, China's RFID applications will develop rapidly.
In fact, RFID can be considered an antique level technology in the IT industry. However, the general bar code can only scan an object at a time, and the RFID technology enables a non-contact identification of multiple objects. That is, if the supermarket goods are all using RFID tags, we don't have to have a long team when checkout in the supermarket. Another factor that hinders RFID is widely used is cost problem, which is also a common problem in the world market. The current RF identification label is still more expensive, and the current price is a minimum of $ 0.15 to a maximum of more than $ 100. However, the high price of electronic tags has become a fatal obstacle to this technology. Before entering the 21st century, the cost of each label has been between 1-2 US dollars. After entering the 21st century, finally fell to less than $ 1 and reached 20-75 cents.
However, many suppliers believe that the price of RFID will drop. Although the price of RFID label is very low, RFID is still too expensive from the perspective of cost accounting. Because of the current situation, the manufacturer has no problem for a container for 5 cents, but it is necessary to spend a 20 cents a toothpaste to spend 5 cents. They are definitely unacceptable.
Many Wal-Mart suppliers believe that if the product is a TV, DVD machine, and a game console, the label cost is nothing, but for small commodities like hand paper and toothbrush, electronic tags have an ultimate sales cost impact It cannot be ignored. Although the cost of the five cents can be reluctantly accepted, Zhang Chenghai believes that now the five cents of electronic label is only theoretical, and it is still unrealistic.
China RFID industry opportunity
RFID's industrial chain is not long, but China has not formed a ripe RFID industry chain. At present, most of the products in the Chinese market are abroad. China now has only 5 manufacturers in studying readers, 5 manufacturers are making packages, 2 chip manufacturers are making chips, the manufacturer of the entire industrial chain It is not mature enough. China's Automation Technology Association RF Working Group currently has 51 member companies, most of which is to do RFID-related system integration and system solutions.
Currently, RFID is generally based on low frequency applications, including applications in vehicle management, ticket management, access control management, and RFID's large-scale application in commercial logistics is based on ultra-high spectrum. Although the ISO Information Technology Commission has put spectrum between 860-960 as a unified standard of global open spectrum, the spectrum applied by China, the radio committee EPC and RFID has not been determined. At present, small-scale tests or applications based on EPC, RFID are primarily based on project review to determine spectrum.
The well-known consulting companies in the industry have expected that the market is the most popular market in the next few years is the packaging / supply chain market. From 2005 to 2009, this market will account for most of the RF identification label applications. Although the latest news indicates that some Wal-Mart suppliers did not meet the requirements of the additional RFID label in Wal-Mart, including Wal-Mart expressed its determination to advance RFID measures. Zhang Chenghai believes that the application of RFID technology is an important measures to promote Wal-Mart strategy, Wal-Mart will not give up.
The second largest application market for RF identification tags is the consumer product market, which is at least a few years after the forecast period. Although the consumer product market is one of the most sensitive markets of individual privacy. If the RFID Gold Mine is hot, the biggest beneficiaries are hardware vendors, but software and consultants include HP, Microsoft, IBM, Sun and SAP, they also want to divide a cup.
Where is our own opportunity of our own manufacturers?
