The COVID-19 pandemic has motivated many companies, including us, to develop and improve different business areas. We started a project studying ARC certified labels, which first required us to get our hands on as many certified labels as possible. Most companies were easy to cooperate with, but in many cases, the sourcing process was extended by additional communications. As a recommendation to tag suppliers, we want to point out that sample orders can be the start of a new, long-lasting customer relationship, which is a good reason to process sample orders with the same importance as regular orders.
中文版 Chinese version Dear Santa, It’s great to start a letter by recognizing that 2019 has again been a truly astonishing year. Not only the tide of RAIN business has been positive, but also the talent pool is headed in the right direction. Take an example, Mr. Sipi Savolainen, a veteran of UPM, Smartrac, and Walki, made a 1-year detour to now find himself back in RAIN business at StoraEnso. We’ve also been fortunate to hire new talents to further expand our own team in Finland. 2019 Cleared Many Issues off the Slate In my letter to you a year ago I called f...
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The Finns drink more coffee than anyone else in the world. If you read more, you’ll see what it has to do with NFC.
In the past year, I have given half a dozen presentations aimed to label printers and converters considering entry to smart label manufacturing. Just recently I introduced RAIN RFID to a group of printing professionals from Thailand and elsewhere in East Asia and South-East Asia in ASPT 2019 popup event in Bangkok. Many printing companies are thinking about how to replace declining ink-on-paper business, and smart labels are a good option popup.
中文版 Chinese version I recently visited an NFC forum meeting where I listened to industry presentations and discussed with many NFC industry experts. User experience, user expectation, and physical level interoperability of various NFC devices came up frequently. This prompted me to finish this article, a draft version was written already while ago. I tested a few smartphones for NFC tapping user-friendliness and dug a bit deeper on the factors affecting the user experience. Three NFC Application Types When I think of NFC, I think of three very different application types and different experiences with them. Smart card: Think of a hotel ...
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中文版 Chinese version RED Puts Accountability to RAIN RFID Component Vendors RED is the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU and it applies to all radio equipment that’s used in Europe. This directive was passed already in 2014 but at first there was a bit of uncertainty of how it exactly works concerning RAIN RFID. Then the ETSI EN 302 208 standard was updated to v.3.1.1. in 2016, which already addresses both the lower and upper ETSI bands – well done Brussels! That standard document put clarity into how RED is enforced concerning RAIN, and that RAIN component vendors are accountable. RED Looks After the Interests of RAIN Vendo...
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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.
