Fantastic Progress at Printed Electronics Europe

Apr 25, 2018 Raghu Das

Europe's leading event on printed, flexible and hybrid electronics - Printed Electronics Europe, hosted by IDTechEx in Berlin on April 11-12, saw attendance from a record 63 countries with 16% growth of the exhibit floor space.

The event is uniquely set apart from all others by its strong focus on the application of the technology. Opening the event were several high profile organizations, including Geely, owner of Volvo and 10% of Daimler. The speaker Andreas Friedrich announced that he sees structural electronics enabled by printed electronics as a key differentiator in vehicles. The CEO of PolyPhotonix, Richard Kirk, spoke of their revolutionary OLED eye mask that is acting as a treatment for those with eye disease, an opportunity of several billion dollars which replaces medicines injected into the eye.

Organizations including Arsenal Football Club, Plastic Omnium, Nokia, Beko, Electrolux, JC Decaux, Johnson & Johnson, GE Healthcare, GSK and many others spoke about their progress in using printed electronics and what they seek. For some, such as Electrolux, the technology is now internally demonstrated and they are helping their suppliers to become able to mass produce printed electronics based devices for their use.

It wasn't just end-users presenting. Working to the criteria set by the host IDTechEx, that commercialization is the key focus of the Printed Electronics Europe event, many companies covered their sales progress and new products, from BlueSpark's successful TempTraq sold in 22,000 retail slots in the US (a flexible temperature band aid based on a printed battery) to an asthma breathalyser using a printed array of gas sensors from one of the award winners, Applied Nanodetectors, to smart textiles demonstrated at the e-textile Korean pavilion, to an outstanding session on smart packaging and the progress of print smart label systems from organizations such as PragmatIC and IMEC.

There was a 100% increase in the number of exhibitors who booked onsite for 2019 - due to be held on April 10 - 11 2019 - highlighting the tremendous value organisations experienced from exhibiting at this event. Feedback included:

"What I found particularly good and exciting was the presence of experts and representatives from many different technology branches and topics, which makes for the perfect networking ground!"

"The conference was very high quality as usual. Good insights, relevant speakers, big companies. The exhibition was also very good".

At the event opening, IDTechEx CEO Raghu Das summarised the industry as in the following slide:

Printed Electronics Europe is held in Berlin annually and the US equivalent - Printed Electronics USA will be in Santa Clara on November 14-15. The event features big brand companies discussing their needs and experiences and matching them to the leading suppliers - the largest global event series on printed electronics.

If you are interested in exhibiting at either of these shows please email Exhibit@IDTechEx.com for further information. If you missed the event purchase the proceedings here.