Western Europe is still cool on the deployment of RFID but the technology is gathering pace in many vertical industries, analysts have found.
According to a report by research company IDC, 12.4 per cent of manufacturing, retail/wholesale and logistics companies in western Europe are rolling out the tracking technology, while another five per cent are piloting it.
One industry likely to be at the forefront of RFID adoption is healthcare, where traceability can be facilitated by RFID tags. Spending on RFID in the healthcare sector is expected to reach $2.3bn (£1.3bn) by 2011.
Opinions evidently remain divided on the technology’s short-term future. Another recent study by analyst house Regan, Jacob and Stanley, however, described the global RFID market as mature and likely to see the emergence of item-level tagging this year.
