RADIO TAGGING

Radio tagging could become the sunrise industry this year, Deloitte said, as sectors ranging from retailing to automobiles drive up adoption of the technology to curtail theft, cut waste and improve productivity.

"In 2005, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) will finally make it out of the lab and into the commercial world ... By the end of the year, more than 10 billion RFID tags will have been sold and used," Deloitte said in its 2005 outlook for the telecoms sector.

Retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Britain's Tesco are in the midst of a drive to replace bar codes with RFID chips embedded in plastic product tags that can track goods and signal the need for restocking, boosting supply efficiency and cutting costs.

Analysts estimate this technology and subsequent cuts in manpower, with inventory control done automatically, could save Wal-Mart, which posts annual sales of about $256 billion, more than $1.3 billion a year.

Deloitte said it expected collecting, collating and presenting RFID data will become a very sizeable industry, with technology companies grabbing the lion's share of revenue.

RFID readers and other hardware could become a healthy market, and RFID applications will find use in sectors ranging from healthcare to construction and transportation, it said

Jeff nolan