Stunning article that shows exactly what inroads RFID has made in not only a variety of places all over the world but in all types of items and applications. (While you read the article, consider that while Sales and Marketing are rushing full speed ahead to put RFID in everything, the security and privacy aspect is NOT being covered adequately. We need a national debate that people understand to consider safeguards for RFID use, because it isn't going to be stopped.)

However, RFID is now used from Bulgaria to Namibia, from Azerbaijan to Vietnam and Antarctica. It is a life to death experience because it is on containers of sperm and new born babies but it also marks burial plots; the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA puts RFID on corpses. Somewhere in between, RFID traces anodes in copper smelters and controls paedophiles. There are well more than 10,000 RFID projects out there and there are over 1,000 suppliers that have now landed substantial orders for the specialist RFID hardware and services involved. Yet things have barely started. For examples, 50,000 libraries should be tagging everything for many benefits but only 500 (1%) have done so as yet.

The IDTechEx RFID Knowledgebase has captured more than 2,400 cases of RFID in action involving more than 2,500 organizations in 85 countries. That includes all the examples we have mentioned above. We are now adding cases at twice the rate of one year ago as RFID truly permeates the whole planet.