Drove RFID Growth In 2007 In round figures, the value of the radio-frequencyidentification (RFID) market grew strongly to $5 billion in 2007. This growth was mainly powered by a peak in deliveries of the Chinese national ID card. About $2 billion of cards and infrastructure were delivered by Chinese suppliers, making China the biggest RFID market. Through 2007, however, the US retained its lead in number of RFID projects. But China leapt from number five to number three, overtaking Japan and Germany. Clearly, a vast number of new RFID projects in China will take up the slack now that the glory days of the national ID card are over.
Globally, the RFID business remained governmentdriven with the healthcare sector showing particularly strong growth in projects. The financial, security, and safety sectors dwarfed all others in both expenditure and number of projects, accounting for a massive 48 percent of market value. This pre-eminence in numbers of projects was driven by passports and RFID financial cards.
Passenger transport and automotive came in second with 19-percent value share and 13 percent of all projects cumulatively. Those percentages were the same as in 2006. Just one applicational sector took significantly more of the pie by the end of 2007: healthcare. Specifically, healthcare saw a 1-percentage point gain in market share. Mainly, the vibrant growth of RFID in the healthcare sector was due to real-time location systems (RTLSs) on staff and assetsparticularly those using existing WiFi systems in hospitals. For more information, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/USA.