RAIN RFID shipments forecast 115bn units by 2028

The report forecasts RAIN RFID tag chip shipments to reach 115bn units by 2028, a year-on-year growth of 20.4%. This highlights continued diversification of RAIN RFID usage and adoption across a growing number of industries and use cases.

“Historically, RAIN RFID market demand has been concentrated in inventory and supply chain management in sectors such as retail. New applications are now proliferating as organisations expand the value and reach of their RAIN RFID investment,” comments Aileen Ryan, President and CEO of RAIN Alliance. “RAIN RFID is increasingly being used to drive efficiencies across new areas of business operations. For example, in retail, companies are increasingly using RAIN RFID for loss prevention and to deliver anti-counterfeit solutions across a more diverse set of items including homeware, electronic equipment and sporting goods. Looking ahead, we’re seeing a move towards fixed RAIN RFID readers as industries look to eliminate manual barcode scanning processes and many sectors are also exploring how they can harness their RAIN RFID deployments to enable more sustainable practices.”

The ‘Global Markets & Applications for RAIN RFID Solutions’ report findings indicate strong market growth, with shipments of RAIN RFID tag chips reaching record volumes of 45.5bn units in 2023, with a third of these sold in Europe. The report complements the RAIN Alliance’s own tag shipment data from its members, with the VDC report including insights from additional manufacturers who are shipping smaller quantities of RAIN RFID tags.

Ryan adds: “Sustainability remains a key catalyst for RAIN RFID adoption and investment growth in the past year and will continue to grow in significance. Use cases being explored include driving efficiency across the supply chain, and using RAIN RFID to better anticipate and manage stock levels to reduce waste. Organisations are also increasingly tagging items to support circular economy developments and sustainability regulation such as the EU’s Digital Product Passport, with tags providing vital information throughout a product’s lifecycle to inform how it is used, reused and dealt with at end-of-life.”

The report also provides detailed analysis of recent RAIN RFID chip shipments, global market spend, and future projection figures for RAIN RFID chips, inlays, finished tags and labels, readers and printers and encoders. For more information on purchasing the full findings of the ‘Global Markets & Applications for RAIN RFID Solutions’ report, please visit the RAIN Alliance website.