“IDTechEx has extensively researched the RFID industry to highlight new trends and forecasts in RFID for the years ahead. Cumulative sales of RFID tags for sixty years until the beginning of 2006 totaled 2.4 billion, with 600 million tags being sold in 2005 alone. The spend on RFID tags in 2005 was $1.2 billion and the total spend on RFID (including tags, readers, services, etc) was $1.85 billion. In 2006, we expect 1.3 billion tags to be sold. About 500 million of these RFID smart labels will be used for pallet and case level tagging, but the majority will be used for a range of diverse markets from baggage and passports to contactless payment cards and drugs.”

Editors have been happy to report on the “We’ll all be rich” series, but we’d like to make a call to analysts far and near: stop it. RFID is/will be huge. You can’t predict the market beyond that. Monthly reports on the size of an industry a decade from now are redundant. Please stop.