RFID adoption is expanding in Singapore beyond retail into laundry, construction, and libraries. Athletes wear ankle tags for race timing, construction sites track metal equipment reliably for the first time, and Singapore's library system has tagged items since 1998, using a million tags yearly. The APAC RFID market is projected to hit US$2 billion by 2016.
RFID technology is something that is pervasive but not invasive. Take for example the triathlon sprint event held in Sengkang recently, where athletes have to go through a 3 km run, a 15 km cycle race, and end up with another 3 km run. How are the timings being tracked? Their timing are being tracked using RFID. All the athletes need to do is to strap an RFID tag to their ankle and they just go through the race like normal. Is it invasive to them? Not at all. So they could do their race without even thinking about what RFID is doing for them. In Singapore, RFID market is worth at least $20 million per year, and this will be made up of sales of RFID tag sale of RFID reader and the system integration part, the software development to automate the business process using RFID. And that is a very important component of successful RFID implementation. Frost& Sullivan estimated that by year 2016, the RFID revenue in Asia Pacific will be worth $2 billion. 3 industries that are driving the adoption of RFID are the laundry industry, the construction industry, as well as library. In the laundry industry, the successful use of RFID at the recent Youth Olympics held in Singapore, where the athletes' uniforms are tagged using RFID, where the athletes send the garments for washing And after washing, the RFID tag on the garment helps to quickly identify who to return the uniform back to. In the construction industry, there are 2 main drivers for the adoption of RFID. One is the increase in safety standards, and 2 is the improvement in RFID tag technology. With the increase in safety standards, increasing safety standards put on the construction industry, the construction industry finds it very necessary to use RFID to help them identify their equipment and metal structures efficiently. With that, we have the improvement in RFID technology where once upon a time RFID tags do not work well with metals. Now, with the new encapsulation methods and material, RFID can be used on metals just like any other material, whereby their read range and read performance is not compromised. Singapore started applying RFID in libraries in 1998, and since then, 1 million tags have been consumed every year. Up to today, the Singapore Public Library's RFID system remains the largest RFID implementation in the world. These 3 applications will be discussed during the RFID World Asia 2011 conference.
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