The report, published by the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) and Management Today, has found that over half of UK companies predict that Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) will be an accepted part of the business landscape in just five years. RFID adoption still needs to gain momentum, though, with over a third of companies (34 percent) presently more interested in seeing how other companies are implementing RFID technology before starting their own project.
The report also highlights that the predicted growth in RFID will be driven by the fact that the technology will shrink in scale and become significantly cheaper over the next three to five years. David Smith, Capgemini's Head of RFID in the UK and a member of the MCA, commented:
"Nokia for example are making significant progress in the area of Near Field Communications and can already produce cheap mobile RFID readers for around $700, but prices will inevitably come down quickly as they move this technology into the mass product market. This will enable you to "touch" a poster of Kylie with your RFID enabled phone to download information and music. People will be able to use their phones in many more ways from checking whether an item is in a shop stockroom to using web services to finding more information about products."
The report highlights that those companies adopting a wait-and-see approach are facing two risks:
• By delaying large-scale RFID projects, companies may be underestimating the benefits of using the technology in small-scale tactical applications.
• The obstacles to effective RFID implementation anticipated by the majority of companies are quite different from those encountered by those companies with more practical experience.
The main reasons companies are adopting a wait-and-see approach to RFID are cited by the report as:
• Over half (54 percent) of companies are concerned about the complexity of integrating RFID technology with its existing systems.
• 43 percent of companies see the lack of a set of global RFID standards as a major obstacle.
• 42 percent of companies cited the cost of technology.
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