RFID tag makers don´t have to<br>worry about the printed electronics yet

"Printed electronics — antennas, transistors and batteries — could eventually change the dynamics of the RFID industry", says industry analyst Sara Shah. "Applied directly to materials such as corrugated cardboard, they would allow manufacturers and distributors to create their own "smart packaging" and bypass the whole long RFID tag production chain." "When printed transistors arrive in 2008 they won't be able to compete with silicon transistors," says Shah. "With their low frequency operation and incompatibility with existing readers, they will not be suitable for open loop supply chains, until standards emerge for item-level LF tagging. They should, however, carve out their own market for tagging very low-cost, non-critical objects in the meantime."