won the RFID Journal Best in Show for its breakthrough condition monitoring tags that can be read from producer to retail receipt. Unlike tags often used for this task today, these tags are able to be read in transit, so that logistics providers can participate in the tracking of goods as they make their way through the supply chain.Another cold chain monitoring tag manufacturer of note is a company that has developed a very low cost, simple to implement and use passive tag.

Five years ago, vendors shied away from developing purpose built tags - they simply did not have enough business to support doing this. Some companies are now discovering just how lucrative designing and manufacturing tags for specific business cases can be. One of these companies, has developed a variety of purpose built tags, and as a result has successfully deployed tags in several industries including healthcare, automobile manufacturing, oil, gas and utilities, and defense transportation and logistics. The secret to this success also has a lot to do with the strength of the partner relationships they have developed in these industries and with the fact that they own their own manufacturing facility, limiting production and security issues.

now has a small footprint RFID handheld reader, but they may be late to the game, as continues to lead in retail deployments of handheld readers. Motorola's latest MC75A handheld has NFC contactless reader capability built in, for the coming wave of high frequency NFC tagged media, assets and payments applications. As retailers get to full rollouts, vendors need to expect that retailers will shop around, so the Korean and Chinese handheld companies will become serious competitors in the North American market.

There are so many other technologies that are worth discussing, but just not enough room on this page - this is a blog after all, so allow me to sum up.