VDC Research report highlights diversification of RAIN usage across more industries and applications, as chip shipments reach record volumes in 2023
3rd June 2024 – RAIN Alliance, the non-profit industry organization supporting the development and adoption of Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), has today published its bi-annual research report ‘Global Markets & Applications for RAIN Solutions’, produced by VDC Research. The report forecasts RAIN tag chip shipments to reach 115bn units by 2028, a year-on-year growth of 20.4%. This highlights continued diversification of RAIN usage and adoption across a growing number of industries and use cases.
“Historically, RAIN 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 investment,” comments Aileen Ryan, President and CEO of RAIN Alliance. “RAIN is increasingly being used to drive efficiencies across new areas of business operations. For example, in retail, companies are increasingly using RAIN 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 readers as industries look to eliminate manual barcode scanning processes and many sectors are also exploring how they can harness their RAIN deployments to enable more sustainable practices.”
The ‘Global Markets & Applications for RAIN Solutions’ report findings indicate strong market growth, with shipments of RAIN 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 tags.
Ryan adds: “Sustainability remains a key catalyst for RAIN 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 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 chip shipments, global market spend, and future projection figures for RAIN 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 Solutions’ report, please visit the RAIN Alliance website.