Printed electronics is growing up. The research for its own sake now has less prominence. The sterile debate about what is organic and what is inorganic (most devices include both) is receding. The unimaginative marketing of printed and thin film electronics as incremental improvements in flat screen and mobile phone displays, for example, is being questioned.
There is something to learn here from the history of RFID. Many RFID tags are partly printed today and many will be totally printed within ten years, so the parallel in marketing terms is interesting. Both printed electronics and RFID are enabling technologies not specific products or solutions. In the early days, imaginative backers of RFID realised that the “low hanging fruit” was not the replacement of barcodes by head on competition. It was the creation of new markets. The key fob that opened and closed your car from a distance was an example of this and $2 billion of these have been sold, if we include the reader in the car. The key was not replaced. It was a market created out of fresh air. Innovision repeated the trick in 2002, landing the world’s largest order for RFID tags – 80 million of them. To go with them, it sold a world record number of RFID readers – millions of them. For what? It was the Hasbro Star wars toy and it enhanced the function of the toy – nothing to do with barcodes. It created a new market.
