Impinj advances IoT connectivity for everyday things

Impinj has shipped more than 50 billion endpoint integrated circuits (ICs) and three million connectivity ICs and devices, extending the Internet to everyday things like apparel, pallets, cases, pharmaceuticals, automotive parts, and luggage. The Impinj platform uses RAIN RFID to deliver data about everyday things to business and consumer applications.

The achievement reflects the adoption of the Impinj platform for digital transformation across diverse markets including retail, supply chain and logistics, healthcare, automotive, and air transportation. Founded in 2000, Impinj announced the shipment of its first 25 billion endpoint ICs in 2018. Since then, the company has focused on expanding its product line and partner base, reaching the 50 billion milestone in just over two years highlighting the opportunity available for RAIN RFID and IoT expansion, according to Impinj.

Impinj endpoint ICs provide item identifiers, require no batteries, and enable smart, wirelessly connected things. Impinj connectivity devices include reader chips, readers, and gateways that identify and locate connected things, providing real-time data about tagged items that inform business decisions. Together, as part of the Impinj platform, they enable the company’s global partner ecosystem to develop a broad set of RAIN RFID products including tags, readers, printers and IoT solutions including inventory management, asset management, and shipment verification. These solutions allow touch-free automation, real-time visibility, and virtualising systems or workflows, Impinj said.

“By enabling total inventory accuracy, RAIN RFID unlocks a host of benefits including labour efficiency, inventory maximisation, transportation cost reductions, and improved omni-channel functionality. Retailers who made early investments in RAIN RFID are more agile than their peers. Having benefited greatly from that agility during the pandemic, I fully expect they will now extend the value of RAIN RFID to self-checkout, loss analytics, and simplified returns processing,” Marshall Kay, founder of the prominent consultancy RFID Sherpas said in an Impinj press release.

"Together with our partners, we’re building a boundless Internet of Things, helping businesses reap the benefits of digital transformation. We envision a future where people engage a connected thing from its point of manufacture, across the supply chain, and ultimately to your home. We will continue to make RAIN RFID easier to access and use as we enable connectivity for trillions of everyday things, ultimately improving people’s lives,” Chris Diorio, founder and CEO of Impinj said.

In 2019, Impinj announced two new endpoint ICs to meet the increasing demand for item connectivity in the retail, grocery, consumer packaged goods, and logistics markets. The new ICs leverage Moore’s Law to improve performance and increase functionality while simultaneously reducing the overall size of the ICs. These new ICs are so small that roughly 30 million of them will fit in a single coffee cup. In 2020, Impinj introduced a new enterprise-grade reader specifically designed to simplify global RAIN deployments. As an IoT edge device, this new reader provides industry-leading performance, enterprise-grade reliability and security, and support for next-gen RAIN tags to meet the demands of businesses seeking to connect everything to the IoT, the company said in a media statement.