The largest European RFID conference is being held on 30th September and 1st October in Cambridge. With a plethora of new announcements and industry-leaders presenting, Dr. Peter Harrop outlines some of the highlights the speaker programme has to offer.

In this summary of the Active RFID market Dr. Peter Harrop outlines why Active RFID and its associated technologies are receiving such attention and have such high growth predictions.

Passive radar is a term applied to radar that covertly employs other people's emissions as they reveal targets, no signal being emitted by those doing the covert detection. This has military uses. It is not to be confused with Real Time Locating System RTLS using passive tags, a new form of RFID-based RTLS that has burst onto the scene in 2008. This employs passive tags instead of the traditional active tags. The idea is actually about ten years old and it was mooted as a UHF system by Trolleyscan who called it RFID Radar and demonstrated by RFSAW, which uses Surface Acoustic Wave chips that are more sensitive and simpler to make than the silicon chips used by everyone else - active and passive.

The global RFID market continues its rapid growth as record orders up to $0.5 billion each are serviced. This year demand for RFID is on target for $5.3 billion globally as it powers its way to $27 billion in 2018. Indeed, much is now happening in Europe, although it is the US and China that share top slot as RFID spenders at present.

NFC-enabled phones have yet to take off, despite phones with the Sony Felica interface, compatible with NFC, being placed in the hands of over 50 million Japanese in little more than two years - one of the fastest adoption rates for electronics ever. So why the delay? Here Dr Peter Harrop shares insight into the topic summarizing findings from the new IDTechEx report NFC-Enabled Phones and Contactless Smart Cards 2008-2018

"Europe is an interesting territory for RFID. So far, it lacks the huge orders in the USA, with two $0.5 billion projects currently being serviced there, and in China with the huge card and library schemes," says Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx.

IDTechEx, along with other analysts, forecast the printed electronics market. While some agree others give widely different figures. After analyzing the industry for nine years, IDTechEx has just completed a new report covering the forecasts of the industry in great detail. Here Raghu Das, CEO, summarises the findings giving that crucial detail behind our forecasts.

Last year, about $2.5 billion was spent on tags and systems at HF (13.56MHz), ten times the amount on RFID at any other frequency and representing 50% of the global RFID market. Now IDTechEx tracks a rush of technology innovation and new market opportunities.

What a difference a year makes. RFID progress from highlights at the IDTechEx RFID Smart Labels USA event.

The largest RFID orders - here comes China - huge advances coming in HF RFID - new vibrant technologies.

The new IDTechEx report RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2008-2018 is the summation of extensive new research in late 2007 and early 2008 including interviews with RFID adopters and solution providers in the various applicational RFID markets, giving an unprecedented level of insight into the total RFID industry and what is really happening. Here Raghu Das, CEO, gives a summary of our findings.

Replacing the silicon chip: progress with printed RFID.

Zebra Technologies has recently bought several impressive RFID companies, putting over $200 million on the table. In different RFID sectors, Assa Abloy buys at least one RFID company every year. Inside Contactless has just raised $38 million to boost its effort on RFID enabled mobile phones with the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia leading the group of investors. Clearly RFID is taking off - big time.

In the build up to the annual IDTechEx RFID USA event in Boston this February and the latest IDTechEx RFID forecasts, Raghu Das reviews RFID progress in 2007.

The prosperous RFID business is on track to grow from about $5 billion in 2007 today to over $25 billion in 2017. Without collusion, most analysts agree to figures in that region and several of them see huge volumes of extremely low cost tags forming a part of the growth - even hundreds of billions in ten years from now. This seems to sit awkwardly with some press reporting that RFID retail initiatives have stalled. As one of those analysts, let IDTechEx explain.

IDTechEx has been on the road again, finding out what is the latest in the RFID world. We recently went to Japan, where we met with several companies very active with major projects in the field, but in different sectors. Here we summarise the progress of RFID in Japan.

A new range of transistors using thin films of organic or inorganic compounds as the semiconductors and gate dielectrics are being pursued by organizations in over 30 countries. The new IDTechEx report

The eighth IDTechEx RFID Europe event broke all previous records with over 350 delegates from 19 countries who heard major corporations sharing their RFID success and needs.

Trusted independent printed electronics and RFID consultancy moves global HQ to U.S. and appoints new German based director.

It was sad that the Food and Drug Administration backed off from urgently pushing through standards and rapid adoption of RFID at item level on drugs, after its earlier firm lead in 2005-6. However, its recommendation remains but with industry left to set the pace.