Public spending boosts RFID

Global RFID sales will increase by 5% this year to reach $5.56 billion, according to a forecast released by international market research firm IDTechEx, reports RFID Update.

The firm concludes that the RFID industry is growing by more than 10%, and that the overall growth rate is impacted by the completion of the Chinese national ID card programme, which has been responsible for billions of dollars in revenue in recent years.

“Public sector spending is driving perhaps as much as 80% of the current market," says IDTechEx chairman Dr Peter Harrop.

Ericsson says all new mobile phones sold in 2010 will include an RFID chip that will allow owners to open their car or house door with their phone, states Wired.

Hakan Djuphammar, vice-president of systems architecture for Ericsson, says credit card companies could make use of mobile user location data and IP mapping to determine if the owner of a card is in the same location where a card transaction is taking place.

He says the chips could also be used to create real-time traffic maps and updates by determining the speed of a driver passing by mobile phone base stations.

3M and its subsidiary 3M Innovative Properties have filed a patent infringement suit against rival Envisionware in the US District Court of Minnesota, according to the American Chronicle.

3M says Envisionware's library systems, including self-service circulation and handheld RFID systems, infringed three of its patents covering technologies used to reduce the workload of librarians.

3M has sought an injunction and damages. Last year, 3M Library Systems released the Tag Data Manager to provide inter-operability between RFID tags and readers.