IDTechEx Ltd

Last week while most of us this side of the pond were at the electronica exhibition in Munich, approximately 3,500 attendees from 42 countries headed to the IDTechEx Show in Santa Clara, California, which featured 284 exhibiting organisations. Raghu Das, CEO, IDTechEx, explains.

IDTechEx Research will focus on some of the key frontiers of short-, medium-, and long-term change in quantum dot (QDs) films. In particular, we will argue that the transition away from Cd based QDs will soon be complete; we will show how QD material improvements are translating into total cost reductions and how that is reshaping the market’s pricing strategies; and finally we will consider whether film type QDs can continue their supreme reign, or whether relentless innovation soon render them obsolete.

Supercapacitors will be a large market, it will interest suppliers of a wide range of speciality chemicals and added value feedstock. The new IDTechEx Research report Supercapacitor Materials and Technology Roadmap 2019-2039 appraises these and identifies gaps in the market for device variants and new material capabilities. 

Iron-based redox flow battery developer, ESS has announced a contract to design and install a combined energy warehouse flow battery storage and solar energy system in Brazil. According to Energy Storage Report, the $1.3m project will be funded in part by a grant from the US Trade and Development Agency through Pacto Geração Distribuída, a subsidiary of the renewable energy plant developer Pacto Energia, with the goal to prove the value of energy shifting using the ESS Energy Warehouse with solar PV.

A new IDTechEx Research report predicts that the Redox Flow Battery market will be worth $4.5bn by 2028. Redox flow batteries (RFB) are an energy storage technology initially developed by NASA in the 70’s for space applications. After several years of intensive R&D, in 2006, several key patents on the technology expired, opening up the arena to companies all around the world.

The release of Ready Player One this past weekend is a significant moment for the Virtual Reality industry. Ernest Cline's bestselling science fiction adventure will achieve a Spielberg-fueled launch to new heights of popular culture fame. It describes a world where living in the virtual reality of the OASIS becomes preferable to living within a dystopian future society riddled by war and energy crises.

The world of agriculture is being quietly transformed by robotic technology. One question to consider is whether tractors will evolve towards full unmanned autonomy? Tractor guidance and autosteer are well-established technologies. In the short to medium terms, both will continue their growth thanks to improvements and cost reductions in RTK GPS technology. Indeed, ID TechEx estimates that around 700,000 tractors equipped with autosteer or tractor guidance will be sold in 2028.

Autonomous mobile robots are causing a paradigm shift in the way we envisage commercial and industrial vehicles. In traditional thinking bigger is often better. This is because bigger vehicles are faster and are thus more productive. This thinking holds true so long as each vehicle requires a human driver. The rise of autonomous mobility is however upending this long-established notion: fleets of small slow robots will replace or complement large fast manned vehicles.

IDTechEx Research's most recent report, Battery Elimination in Electronics and Electrical Engineering 2018-2028, notes that billions of wireless electronic and electrical products consuming microwatts to milliwatts or more operate without batteries or even capacitors to store energy. Among the most successful are the piezoelectric gas lighter, the bicycle light with dynamo and the EnOcean wireless building controls such as sensors, lights and light switches in over 400,000 buildings and some boats.

Robotic technology will transform the forklift industry, causing a colossal transfer of value from human-provided driving services, towards spending on autonomous industrial material handling machines, thus fuelling an industry revenue boom far exceeding recent growth trends. By Dr Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, Research Director, IDTechEx

IDTechEx predict that 2017 will be the first billion dollar year for wearable sensors. These critical components are central to the core value proposition in many wearable devices. The Wearable Sensors 2018-2028: Technologies, Markets & Players report includes IDTechEx’s latest research and forecasts on this topic, collating over three years of work to provide a thorough characterisation and outlook for each type of sensor used in wearable products today.

By 2027, mobile robotics in material handling and logistics will have become a $75bn market. It will then more than double by 2038. These staggering headline figures mask turbulent transformative change underneath: some technologies will rise and transform the fortunes of industries, fuelling growth rates far outpacing recent trends, whilst others will face with decay and obsolescence. We are at the beginning of the beginning of a transformative change, and the time to plan is now.

Flexible consumer electronic devices are now a reality, and as forecasted by IDTechEx in the launch of the first ever market research report on the topic of barrier films for electronics almost ten years ago, innovation in encapsulation was one of the critical requirements that needed to be met in order to realise commercially viable consumer products. By Dr Harry Zervos, Principal Analyst, IDTechEx

  Report by IDTechEx Research and free AR and VR webinar by Dr Harry Zervos, Principal Analyst, IDTechEx. Augmented and virtual reality headsets are by now a reality (pun intended), and they bring about a paradigm shift in form factor for portable electronics. 

The IDTechEx report, Electrically Active Smart Glass and Windows 2018-2028 observes that electrically active see-through glass is an idea whose time has come. It powers the megatrend of structural electronics instead of the tired old components-in-a-box designs and replaces drapes and ugly solar panels that are an afterthought. It saves space, weight and cost while improving reliability, ruggedness and life of electrics, electronics and active optics. It makes buildings far more efficient and pleasant to use.

Based as a follow on from the IDTechEx overview, ‘Supercapacitor Technologies and Markets 2016-2026’ the report ‘Supercapacitor Materials 2017-2027’ has just been released. It is packed with detailed analysis, many new infograms, conference slides, roadmaps and a ten year forecasts 2017-2027. It is based on global research by PhD level multi-lingual analysts mainly in 2016-7 with frequent updates.

The term Stretchable Electronics conceals great diversity. Indeed, it is an umbrella term that refers to a whole host of emerging electronic materials, components and devices that exhibit some degree of mechanical stretchability. Stretchable electronics has been in the making for than a decade, but it up to now it has been mostly a solution looking for a problem.  Author: Dr Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, Research Director, IDTechEx

Haptic technology is now present in billions of electronic devices, from vibrating smartphones to notifications in industrial scanners. With this in mind, a new report from IDTechEx Research, Haptics 2017-2027: Technologies, Markets and Players, has revealed that the haptics industry will be worth $2.8bn by 2027.

A new report has been published by IDTechEx Research into the feasibility of Airborne Wind Energy (AWE), a system that uses UAVs, or drones, to capture wind energy at heights higher than standard wind turbines. The concept began with kites flying in a figure of eight trajectory to create electricity from heights where winds are much stronger and more consistent than those tapped by conventional wind turbines on land or even offshore. 

The electronic industry is in the midst of a major paradigm shift: novel form factors are emerging, ranging from the introduction of limited stretchability, through to elastic and conformable electronics.