In the near term, the greatest growth will be in the labeling of mail and packages, crates and pallets, airline baggage, library books and military assets. Over the longer term, falling prices, greater economies of scale, technological advances and the establishment of uniform RFID communications standards will support the development of additional applications. However, consumer privacy concerns will remain a major hurdle, especially in the key retail segment.
Basic electronic article surveillance (EAS) anti-shoplifting labels will continue to dominate into the next decade, based on successful security modality and widespread use in retail. EAS label sales will continue to benefit from falling unit costs, source tagging initiatives and the opening of apparel, or “soft goods,” based on the transition from EAS hard tags to labels.