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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1558472" data-attributes="member: 3649">The reason you haven't seen it yet is that the technology is still being tested in real-world field conditions, a set of industry standards has yet to be adopted across the board (some international standards do exist, mainly for such specialized things as tracking animals), and the cost of the chips themselves needs to drop very much lower (for the supplier), as does the cost of the readers (for the retailer), for things to become truly ubiquitous. These are for the passive RFID systems that are the rage; the active ones have been used for the past several years in some larger inventory systems, generally with many different competing software platforms.  Wal-Mart has mandated that its 100 top suppliers incorporate the chips on cartons and pallets by January 2005, but at least some suppliers are talking about problems they're having with that compliance. Most center around the cost, reader confusion, interference from certain goods (usually ones that contain a lot of metal  or water), and unreliability - some suppliers are reporting as high as a 20% failure rate when most agree that even a 1% failure rate will put them in a worse position than they are now with barcodes.  So, it'll probably still be some time coming.</blockquote>