RAIN Alliance Reports 42.7 Billion Tag Chip Shipments in 2025

Adoption and new-program expansion continues despite macroeconomic factors

Each year, the RAIN Alliance compiles shipment data from its leading tag manufacturer members — EM Microelectronic, Impinj, NXP, and Shanghai Quanray Electronics — to track how the market is moving. In 2025, those four companies shipped 42.7 billion RAIN tag chips globally.

The 2025 figure represents a year-over-year decline from 2024’s record chip shipments, driven by several macroeconomic factors. The semiconductor industry’s inventory cycle — where small shifts in end-market demand produce amplified swings in supply-chain orders — was one such macroeconomic factor, with days of inventory running 26 days above the 10-year median at the start of 2025. Tariff uncertainty was another, dampening U.S. demand for apparel and general retail, which represents a large share of total RAIN RFID demand and retail destocking added further pressure.

Across the industry, the RAIN Alliance is seeing new RAIN RFID deployments moving forward and many established programs are expanding their scope — from retail and logistics to healthcare and manufacturing. RAIN technology is deepening its foothold in markets where it has already proven its value, while steadily extending into new ones. Over the past four years, the RAIN market has grown 50%.

“We continue to see growing adoption of RAIN RFID in existing markets such as retail, logistics, healthcare and manufacturing, as well as in new markets with a wide range of items to be tagged including food, beauty, sports equipment and electronics,” said Aileen Ryan, President and CEO of RAIN Alliance. “We expect strong future growth in major global initiatives supported by the RAIN Alliance.”

The Map of Everything

Behind that 50% four-year growth is a market that has broadened significantly. RAIN RFID technology has its roots in supply chain and logistics, expanded into apparel retail where item-level tagging at scale drove significant growth, and has since spread across a wide range of industries — each arriving at the technology for its own operational reasons.

What these industries share is a common operational need: accurate, real-time visibility at the item level. The specific pressures differ — inventory shrinkage in retail, patient safety in healthcare, freshness and waste in food, compliance in pharmaceuticals — but RAIN technology addresses each of them through the same fundamental capability. That consistency across very different contexts is part of what makes the technology’s expanding footprint so significant.

  • Beauty and personal care: item-level tagging is gaining traction for inventory accuracy, product authentication, and grey market protection across a category with billions of units in global circulation.
  • Sports and outdoor equipment: manufacturers are exploring RAIN RFID for product lifecycle management, warranty registration, and consumer and athlete engagement.
  • Consumer electronics: RAIN RFID is being used for returns management, asset tracking, and end-of-life sustainability programs, where item-level identification underpins the entire process.
  • Healthcare and pharmaceuticals: medication management, compliance tracking, and surgical asset control are driving adoption, with patient safety outcomes directly tied to the accuracy RAIN RFID technology provides.
  • Food and perishables: freshness tracking, food waste reduction, and food safety compliance are active use cases, particularly as regulatory pressure around food traceability increases.
  • Logistics and manufacturing: deployment continues to deepen, with real-time asset and inventory visibility now considered a baseline operational requirement rather than a differentiator in many segments.

Each of these industries is at a different stage of adoption, with different timelines, procurement cycles, and technology readiness levels. That distribution is itself a positive indicator, it means the pipeline of future demand is spread across multiple fronts rather than concentrated in any single vertical.

Two Developments That Will Shape the Next Chapter

Beyond the organic expansion across new industries, two developments stand out for their potential to move the market to a different level entirely.

The Digital Product Passport: Regulation as a Growth Catalyst

The European Union’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) will require manufacturers across a wide range of product categories to attach verifiable lifecycle and sustainability data to their goods. RAIN technology has been accepted as a qualified data carrier for the DPP framework, and similar regulations are advancing in China and other major markets. The RAIN Alliance has been accepted as a liaison to the CEN/CENELEC JTC24 Committee and is actively supporting the development of standards that ensure RAIN RFID technology plays a central role as this global framework takes shape.

RAIN-Enabled Smartphones: Putting RAIN RFID in Every Pocket

The emergence of RAIN-enabled smartphones is one of the most significant developments for the RAIN RFID ecosystem. Leading mobile chipset suppliers are actively integrating RAIN capabilities into both enterprise and consumer handsets, and RAIN-enabled enterprise smartphones have already been shipping for several quarters. Retailers are now eagerly anticipating consumer devices, and the demonstrations at NRF and Euroshop this year gave a compelling preview of why — at both shows, Decathlon showcased live RAIN-enabled smartphone demonstrations showing what the technology makes possible.

Today, reading a RAIN RFID tag requires dedicated reader hardware, the right tool for highthroughput retail and logistics environments, but a barrier for use cases that depend on individual consumers or field workers interacting with tagged items directly. RAIN-enabled smartphones change that equation. A consumer scanning a product to learn about its materials, origin, or care instructions. A retailer using in-store tagged inventory to serve relevant product recommendations or promotions to a shopper in real time. A field technician tracking assets from the device already in their pocket. A recycling system that knows exactly what it is processing before the item arrives. The RAIN Alliance is working to accelerate this transition and the new generation of applications it will unlock. RAIN Alliance members will be showcasing a range of RAIN-enabled smartphone use cases at RAIN in Action in Madrid, September 29–October 1, including live demonstrations in the new RAIN Alliance Experience Lab.