RAIN RFID is being adopted increasingly in several industries such as automotive manufacturing, healthcare, and pharma. Because of the growing number of implementations, there is an increasing need for a solution that helps to scale up the implementations. One of the bottlenecks seems to be specifying RAIN tag performance in a way that enables the use of tags from several manufacturers in a system. Need for performance specification or for a method to classify tags comes up more and more frequently in industry meetings. The good news is that pioneering industries have solved these questions earlier, and there are working solutions ready for adoption.

I think this was my 11th time at the RFID Journal Live! show. For me the show is mostly about meeting a lot of customers and partners during a highly effective couple of days. The number of exhibitors seems to be going down, as is the number of people visiting the exhibition. At the same time, we are seeing less and less significant, new technical advancements at the show. Nevertheless, I think there is a valuable insight to be found: RFID is business as usual!

The RAIN RFID market has been growing nicely throughout the latest years. The latest news is that last year a total of 15.4 billion RAIN ICs were sold – and we are nicely on track for more than 20 billion in 2020. At the same time, the market penetration is still very low, so there is plenty of room to grow. We can already see 100 billion tags a year in the horizon. Then maybe another ten more years, and we will be at 1 trillion. However, several things in our thinking will need to change for that to happen.

Dear Santa, end of 2017 I was nervous about the talent pool in our business. Turns out I just wasn’t completely in the loop. In 2018 both the RAIN name and RAIN market enjoyed a well deserved boost. Best of all, there seems to be a consensus among manufacturers, brands and retailers that source tagging is the way to go. But - here are my wishes for a wonderful year 2019!

Im Januar 2016 hatte ich einen Blog darüber geschrieben, wie RAIN RFID-Unternehmen ihre Interessen vor allem in Europa vertreten sollten. Die Regulierung der Frequenzzuteilung schreitet langsam voran und jetzt, zweieinhalb Jahre später, ist es mir eine große Freude festzustellen, dass die bisherigen Ergebnisse beeindruckend sind. Lassen Sie uns einen Blick darauf werfen, wie die Nutzung des höheren ETSI-Frequenzbandes möglicherweise die Art und Weise der Optimierung des Tagging verändert. Sicherlich werden sich diese Änderungen nicht unmittelbar bemerkbar machen. Mein Beitrag hebt zwei Faktoren hervor die derzeit einen unmittelbaren Vorteil dieser neuen Verordnung für den Anwender behindern.

In January 2016 I wrote a blog about how RAIN RFID companies should defend their interests especially in Europe. Frequency regulation moves forward slowly, and now 2,5 years later it gives me great pleasure to conclude that the results so far are rather impressive. Let’s have a look at how the upper ETSI band potentially changes the way tagging is optimized. Surely the change is not immediate, and my story further highlights two factors that currently prevent end users from benefiting from this new regulation.

The October 11th 2018 was a day of small celebration in the RFID industry. Celebration, because on that date, the European Commission published their positive implementing decision about the 915-921 MHz frequency band in Europe. Small, because it came out as somewhat of a compromise in the end allowing less than anticipated new channels, and in coexistence with other IoT and short range devices. What happens then?