On the printing side, there is a lot of commoditization, Gupta says. “There are so many vendors to choose from, and the market is getting increasingly fragmented,” she says. “Vendors are struggling to hold onto customers while facing very stiff competition from Asia, given the low barriers to entry due to the plug-and-play nature of these solutions.”

While camera-based technologies represent a new market for vendors to expand into, there are no new and emerging printing technologies with which vendors can differentiate themselves. “They’re competing for the same set of customers with the same product portfolio,” she says. “If anything, most of the innovation is coming on the mobile printer front.”

Mobile printing saw a double-digit jump from 2011 to 2012, while the rest of the market stayed relatively flat. Overall, the Americas were one region that did very well, driven by mobile printer investments. Asia-Pacific declined while Europe also struggled with an ongoing financial crisis and manufacturing slowdown.

On the stationary scanning side, a surprising decline was recorded across product categories. Point-of-sale scanners stayed relatively flat, but Gupta says we can expect the overall stationary scanning market to pick up in 2014. “Camera-based technologies are making huge gains in the handheld market, but are only just now creeping into the stationary point-of-sale space.”

Vendors are also looking to grow their presence in emerging markets in Asia. As a result, although vendors like Motorola, Honeywell and Datalogic might not shift much in 2013 or 2014, Gupta suspects they will increasingly focus their efforts on emerging markets. Zebra is still No. 1 on the bar code printing side, for instance, but faces stiff competition from Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers, who are also looking to expand their presence in emerging markets.

RFID: After growing by double-digit rates in 2011, the RFID market again grew nearly 13% from $4.8 billion to $5.5 billion in 2012. Looking forward, the market is expected to post a CAGR of 11.1% through 2017, according to Liard.

Since last year, RFID has become further entrenched in apparel handling. Liard says RFID in apparel has reached the tipping point, with several billion RFID tags sold in 2012 as compared to the low hundreds of millions in prior years. As more stores become RFID-enabled, more retailers are supporting item-level RFID, Liard says. “In retail apparel, we see additional product lines being included under the umbrella of RFID,” he says. “Where previously they were focused almost exclusively on apparel, they’re now looking at tagging more products.”

RFID is part of the multi-channel conversation, he says. “Customers are looking at how to turn stores into miniature distribution centers and use RFID not only for inventory control but for shipping and receiving operations.”

Increased interest is also apparent in applying RFID tags closer to the point of manufacture. “Some do it in the DC, some in the back room of a retail store, and some at point of manufacture,” says Liard. “But when you talk about multi-channel, you need that visibility through the entire supply chain.”

Last year, Liard anticipated growth in RFID being used for asset management, which also continues to progress. “Aside from transportation, logistics and manufacturing, it’s reaching some of the non-traditional industries, from oil and gas to construction and mining, and increasingly in health care,” he says.

As it becomes further embedded in traditional applications, RFID technology is also innovating to accommodate a growing number of asset and product types. “Whether hardware or form factors for tags and readers, innovation continues unabated in RFID,” Liard says. “For 2014 and beyond, I’m interested to see what will happen with embedded RFID solutions in kiosks and consumer electronics. The volume of units is trending in the direction of embedded opportunities, as opposed to traditional handheld and fixed position readers.”

As a result, Liard says he continues to see new players enter the market, with continued investment in RFID-focused firms. “Players are still coming out of China both for readers and tags,” he says, “after many years of being dominated by North America and Europe.”