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China Puts More Money on RFID(China IT Watch Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Oct 17, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --The Ministry of Science and Technology of China lately announced that it has detailed 20 major RFID programs that the Chinese government will allocate CNY 128 million to support. The 20 RFID programs include super frequency RFID anti- collision technology; RFID middleware research; RFID public service systems and framework design; RFID tag and antenna design technology; RFID system testing technology; RFID information integration and management technology; and RFID industrialization. In addition, the 863 Plan emphasizes five key areas for RFID applications, including RFID applications for the postal service, RFID applications in manufacturing processes, RFID application in food and goods safety management, RFID application in anti-counterfeiting technology area and RFID application in financial management. CCW Research's recent report states that China's public security sector will drive the development of RFID in China. In the report, "Research Results of RFID Development Trends and Future Market Opportunities 2005-2006", CCW Research points out that although the RFID market scale in China was last year only CNY 1.6 billion and the application of the technology was limited to anti-counterfeiting security, medicine, food safety, gate management and pet management, RFID applications in the country are on a rapid increase thanks to the development of advanced RFID technology and the unveiling soon of RFID standards. CCW Research says that driven by the application in the public security area, RFID will soon be expanded to other industries and sectors. It estimates that government, transportation and manufacturing will be the most important fields for RFID application in China at the initial stage and then logistics and goods supply will be the important fields during middle stage. The retailing industry will be the largest market as RFID matures. According to a recent report, the Chinese RFID market reached CNY 226 million in the second quarter of 2005, more than twice as much as the same time last year, displaying a rapid growth in Chinese RFID market. The report prepared by Analysys shows that the Chinese government puts its full weight behind the development of the Chinese RFID market. Government-related applications account for the largest share in the RFID application fields. But RFID development is still restricted by many factors, including sustained high costs, lack of a unified standard, immature supply chain and supporting links among others. All these problems are still unsolved, which creates a large bottleneck for large-scale acceptance of RFID. The nationwide launch of second-generation ID cards is the most important reason for this year's rapid growth. Second- generation ID cards and related products share 38 percent of the total market. In addition RFID technology reached a good momentum in fields where it is already applied on a large scale, such as public transportation, campus management, residential area management, and so on. Meanwhile, structural change in application fields also modifies percentage of RFID products in each frequency band, among which the high frequency products, represented by 13.56M for the second generation ID cards, increased largely by this amount. While low frequency products, comparatively more mature in application, keep a relatively stable growth. The ultra-high frequency products, quite small in terms of percentage, are adopted for application gradually, based on advancements in high speed and long distance recognition. A number of Chinese government departments are working on a white paper covering the development of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which will make keeping track of products easier. From Guangzhou Daily, Page 1, Monday, October 16, 2006 [email protected] Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast LLC. All rights reserved |