RFID revenue to hit $250m

Frost & Sullivan has revealed that the radio frequency and identification (RFID) market in the South East Asia and Australia New Zealand region will reach $250 million by 2016, reports TMCnet.

However, the research firm explains the most challenging factor governing the RFID industry is the high cost of ownership of this technology.

Richard Sebastian, Frost & Sullivan industry analyst, notes: “Many stakeholders are deterred by the total cost of ownership, as both hardware and system integration cost can be significant - particularly for larger-scale rollouts. Hence, many potential end-users prefer to wait for the costs to reduce before deploying the technology.”

California's Department of General Services is equipping 12 of the state's data centres with an RFID-based temperature control system intended to reduce energy consumption, states RFID Journal.

The system, known as the data automation software hardware is designed and installed by Federspiel Controls, and includes 900 MHz active RFID tags and readers from Dust Networks.

The RFID tags transmit that temperature data to a reader, which then sends that data to the software residing on a dedicated server on the data centre's back-end system via an Ethernet cable.

A Japanese tech company called TeamLab has rolled out a prototype of smart hangers that react to shoppers and display outfit combinations on nearby screens, says PSFK.

Individual hangers are embedded with digital tags and as items are lifted from clothing racks, digital screens are triggered to provide suggestions on how to combine the items held by the customer.

It's speculated that by reprogramming the smart hangers could help retailers reuse the tagging technology.