Friday, 12 March 2010
Home
| Playing tag |
|
|
| Friday, 24 April 2009 | |
|
RFID coming along nicely… but Viv is watching.
According to research and consulting firm IDTechEx, the value of the global radio frequency identification (RFID) market will hit US5.56bn this year, up from US$5.25bn last. This includes tags, readers and software/services for RFID cards, labels, fobs and all other form factors. IDTechEx ceo and managing director Raghu Das says the majority of the spend is on RFID cards and their associated services - totalling US$2.99bn. He notes that that the market for RFID is growing and reports that a large amount of its value is due to government-led RFID schemes, such as those for transportation, national ID (contact-less cards and passports), military and animal tagging. To some degree government-sponsored RFID initiatives are recession-resistant. As Das points out, governments will not stop tagging passports or cattle to save money. He also notes that more and more cities around the world are migrating to using RFID cards and eventually RFID tickets and RFID-enabled cellphones for transit. As is very well reported, though, there’s a potential privacy ‘darkside’ to RFID. This is something that concerns Viviane Reding, the redoubtable Member of the European Commission for Information Society and Media. In her weekly video message last week Reding spoke of the danger of the Internet turning into a ‘jungle’ if personal online information were to be compromised by the expanding use of social networking, behavioural advertising profiling, and the use of RFID chips. Of the latter, Reding remarked: “While they can make businesses more efficient and better organised, I am convinced they will only be welcomed in “No European should carry a chip in one of their possessions without being informed precisely what they are used for, with the choice to remove or switch it off at any time,” she continued. “The ‘Internet of Things’ will only work if it is accepted by the people.” And this could get quite serious. “I finally believe that it is imperative for the next Commission, which will come into office by the end of this year, to review Just look at what happened to regional cell phone roaming charges when the Commission got interested in them. John Williamson |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|