Research firm IDTechEx has identified over 150 China-based companies supplying Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Until now the use of RFID technology in mainland China has mainly been driven by government mandates and projects, from one billion contactless ID cards issued to complete rail car management systems. These have typically been highly profitable for suppliers involved and some suppliers are even state owned.

Now China has also rapidly become a large exporter of RFID, going from having a global market supply share in UHF RFID inlays of less than 10% in 2012 to 30% in 2015, mainly used to tag apparel by clothing retailers around the world.

In the new report titled RFID in China 2015-2025, IDTechEx Research provides a full study and assessment of the prospects of the RFID market in China. The research was carried out by IDTechEx analyst Dr Xiaoxi He based on interviews conducted in China in addition to the full knowledgebase of RFID market and business intelligence from IDTechEx led by Raghu Das, achieved over 15 years of studying the entire RFID market.

In 2015, 80% of the RFID systems deployed in China will be based on HF RFID (operating at 13.56MHz), but UHF RFID adoption is growing quickly although lagging the US and Europe. As a result UHF chip design/manufacturing development has been listed as one of the priorities in China’s IoT development, culminating in several government funded programs to develop UHF RFID readers, for example.

The unique study RFID in China 2015-2025 categorises more than 150 companies by value chain positions and specialized frequencies and of those over 110 are closely assessed. The report gives a detailed analysis on the RFID value chain in China across all the main frequency types and ten year forecasts for the use of RFID in China by 13 application categories in addition to the Chinese government programs.

The research was conducted based on face-to-face or telephone interviews, secondary research on online resources, company annual reports, IDTechEx’s database and other resources. RFID companies and RFID adopters will find great value when they are looking for partnership, trying to understand what is really going on in China or making strategic decisions in RFID.