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RFID -- Another Bubble?
There's word that Alien Technologies, an RFID company, just secured $66 million in second-round financing. That's great! But I keep getting this funny feeling that there is a bubble in here somewhere.
Now that a former CIA Analyst and SAP are getting together to talk about using RFID to track people, everybody is getting into the RFID act. Heck, the University of California is even offering a certificate program in RFID. There must be something there. With organizations like WalMart and DoD endorsing RFID, it's not going anywhere. The British government's new ID card will even be RFID-enabled. (One wonders if they have heard about the people-tracking aspects of the technology)
With every technology, however, there must come a shake-out. There's a standards shakeout and a practical shakeout. I see the standards taking shape, but I don't see the practical application shakeout happening with RFID yet. And that is troublesome. With new technology, like UHF RFID tagging, it's obvious that some organizations see that there is an issue with things like noisy environments, liquids, metal product containers, etc, but I've yet to see acceptable read rates in a real-world mixed-product environment. Hello! So that means that sometime, somewhere, somehow, there is going to be a lot of re-engineering, re-programming, re-pricing, and re-thinking RFID in the larger marketplace. And THAT should give those investors who came up with the 66 million a little bit to think about, you know?
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