Current Deployments Expected to Rise 450% in Next 12 Months

SANTA CRUZ, CA, March 24, 2004 - The new Wireless Development Survey from Evans Data has found that Security and Access Control are the most likely applications to use RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology with 3 in 10 survey respondents planning an RFID implementation saying that they plan on developing security applications first. Other likely applications are: inventory and asset management, and industrial tracking.

RFID has a small number of applications deployed presently but is expected to increase by 450% in the next year and a further 96% in 2006.

"RFID is still in the process of becoming. It holds amazing promise for access control and inventory management but there is another edge to that sword, the privacy concerns about the use of RFID technology to track individuals without their knowledge or consent," said Jason Kaczor, Evans' wireless analyst. "It will remain a very interesting technology and, as the data has shown, RFID is poised to make 2004-2005 its biggest year ever."

Other findings from the March 2004 survey of 450 wireless developers:

• More than a third of survey respondents have already implemented a Wireless LAN (WLAN) and another third expect to incorporate a WLAN within the next two years. To secure those WLAN's, the most likely security mechanism is Wi-fi Protected Access (WPA) followed by Wireless Equivalent Protection (WEP) and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) and its various forms.
• Cost of airtime is the biggest barrier for mobile device and services adoption. Developers in North America are the least likely to be affected by Cost of Airtime issues and Latin American developers are the most likely to be affected with more than half saying airtime costs are a significant barrier to adoption.
• Wireless devices need to have a means of getting the information out and it appears that developers recognize this with almost half indicating that it is "absolutely" or "probably" important for wireless devices to have printing capabilities.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2007 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

###