Peter Harrop

IDTechEx sees a huge potential for printed electronics in supermarkets, from printed RFID reducing stockouts and permitting 100% product recalls and printed electronics giving us electronically programmable posters that have a cost of ownership less than paper.

Recently, the commercialization of printed electronics has progressed from conductive patterns to batteries, displays, sensors, resistors, solar cells, lighting and transistor circuits, increasingly in combination. Power Paper is making 12 million skin patches yearly that electrically deliver cosmetics through the skin.

Electronic circuits that are wholly or substantially printed are a commercial success today. Brand enhancement is a popular theme, from the tester on a battery to the animated display on a recent edition of Esquire magazine and the heated outdoor apparel of many famous brands.

By Dr Peter Harrop At IDTechEx, when we teach Radio Frequency Identification RFID, we talk of it being a ubiquitous enabling technology like the wheel or paper. Some people consider that to be rather far fetched. After all, wheels extend from prayer wheels, steering wheels and wheels of fortune to aircraft wheels and microscopic wheels in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems MEMS. They are everywhere, as is paper because that appears as anything from art to toilet paper, packaging, books and origami. However, RFID is now used from Bulgaria to Namibia, from Azerbaijan to Vietnam and Antarctica. It is a life to death experience because it is

By Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) have more market potential than any other form of potentially printed electronics. This is because they are proving useful for both electronic displays and lighting. Indeed they also have great potential for signage, a major requirement intermediate between these two. Anyone looking at the enormous and expensive plasma displays in airports that display simple logos and signage will realise that there has to be a better way with signage. Potentially, “wallpaper” electronic signage would use far less power and have both lower capital cost and installation cost. Roadmap The roadmap for progress in improving

Item level RFID is set for substantial growth over the next decade. A new study from IDTechEx forecasts and explores key markets that will apply item-level tagging, advances in technology and the mass adoption that will follow. Dr. Peter Harrop from IDTechEx summarises this study below. Item level RFID is the tagging of the smallest taggable unit of things – the library book, apparel, jewellery, engineering parts and laundry are examples. Already profitable for most suppliers, item level tags and systems will be the world’s largest RFID market by value from 2007 onwards. Item level RFID tagging will rocket from $0.16 billion in 2006