RFID: Plug-and-Play to Save the Day

After the initial excitement around Wal-Mart's January 1, 2005 RFID deadline, things have gone a bit quiet. As ABI Research has noted in the past, a significant number of those suppliers have gone only as far as they absolutely had to in order to satisfy their mega-customer's basic requirements.

If — as evidence from the consumer goods vertical market suggests — many end-users are currently in a "wait and see" holding pattern, why is that the case and what will it take to get the RFID ball rolling?

According to ABI Research analyst Sara Shah, the answer can be summed up in three words: plug-and-play. "Leaving aside the important issues of cost and reliability," she says, "most of the RFID products available so far require a good deal of hard work for users to integrate them into their existing supply chain systems. Companies want to be able to plug an RFID reader or printer into their network and simply have it work. They want it to coexist with their own IT systems and to be able to manage RFID centrally without massive reconfiguration, extensive training, or the need to outsource."

So far, solutions capable of doing that have been scarce.

However, some RFID vendors are making a start. "A few startups have begun to address this need," notes Shah, "and new products from Symbol Technologies and Microsoft show this same trend of plug-and-play convenience." It is that kind of seamlessness, ABI Research believes, that will encourage end-users to move beyond "slap-and-ship" to the point where they will see a clear business case in favor of full-scale RFID implementation.

ABI Research's new study, "The RFID Consumer Goods Market", will examine how RFID can provide a return on investment for consumer goods companies. It explores the reasons why they are unable to justify the investment now, and issues that may arise as they begin wide scale rollouts.

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations supporting annual research programs, intelligence services and market reports in automotive, wireless, semiconductors, broadband, and energy. For information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.