Item-level intelligence requirements spur the growth of RFID across sectors such as industrial, manufacturing, retail, transportation, security, healthcare and consumer applications. RFID has quietly crossed the chasm exhibiting a stable - yet still innovative - market. So what will drive the market in 2015?

The University of Southern California housing office knew its housing facilities, on and off campus, had upwards of 60,000 pieces of furniture and appliances. But until the student housing office deployed a radio frequency identification system, tracking which items were at what locations, as well as which were broken, missing or due for replacement, required exhaustive manual inventories. Those inventory counts, typically conducted during summers, required the hiring of temporary workers and many hours of labor to catalog what was where.

Hundreds of recreational marijuana shops are slated to open in Colorado on Jan. 1. Once that happens, every package of buds or processed products, such as marijuana-laced brownies, will have an RFID tag attached to it, intended to help the state regulate product and ensure that it comes from authorized sources.

After two years of trialing and then deploying an inventory-tracking RFID system for a large European apparel retailer, sister companies IER and SDV are now marketing a solution based on that deployment. The offering, known as iD by SDV, combines SDV's software and logistics services with IER's RFID tags and readers, enabling users to track goods from the point of manufacture to the point of sale.

Valio, a Finnish company that manufactures dairy consumer products, as well as powdered milk and other ingredients for the food industry, is piloting an automated solution for monitoring products as they move through packing and shipping processes, via RFID-enabled wheels on carts, also known as trolleys, that transport the goods.

Fine wines are vulnerable to counterfeiting or fraud, in large part due to their high value. A single bottle of French Bordeaux, from Chateau Le Pin, averages $3,000 and can be priced at up to $10,000 or more, making the trafficking of forgeries lucrative for counterfeiters. Photocopied labels, for example, can be attached to bottles of counterfeit wine, which can then end up being sold to consumers"”often at auctions, or at any weak link along the supply chain.