RFID Forecasts, Players and Opportunities 2022-2032

IDTechEx has studied the RFID market for almost 20 years. The latest version of the RFID market research report, "RFID Forecasts, Players and Opportunities 2022-2032", provides a comprehensive overview covering passive RFID (for UHF, HF, and LF frequencies), battery-assisted passive, active RFID, and chipless RFID technologies, players, and markets. This report presents an unbiased analysis of primary data gathered through our interviews with key players throughout the value chain (many of whom supply data to us under non-disclosure agreements that allow us to aggregate the data into a total) as well as secondary data from all available sources, and it builds on our expertise in the RFID industry. This report gives extensive forecasts and depth that no other source can match.

Current market and outlook

Despite a 5% decline in the global RFID market in 2020 compared to 2019, due to COVID-19's influence, the market rebounded well in 2021. The global RFID market is expected to be worth $11.6 billion in 2021, rising to $12.2 billion in 2022, according to IDTechEx. This comprises RFID labels, cards, fobs, and any other form factors, as well as tags, readers, and software/services for both passive and active RFID.

In total, IDTechEx predicts that 28.4 billion passive RFID tags will be sold in 2021, up from 23.8 billion in 2020, representing a double-digit growth rate. The majority of such expansion is due to passive UHF RFID labels. However, in 2021, UHF (RAIN RFID) tag sales by value will be just 30% of HF tag sales (including NFC), owing to the higher price point of HF tags used for security (such as payments, access, etc.) against the cheaper, largely disposable UHF (RAIN) tags used for tagging items.