The Hype and The Promise around flexible display technology
Posted on 2008 under Hardware | No Comment13 Aug
The engineers and scientists among you are probably aware of the hype around flexible and plastic electronics (FPO). Many of you may be disappointed or even dismissive of current claims about the potential value of the technology(s), given the hype that has been presented about FPO.
In the late 1990’s and 2000, there was a great deal of excitement around using plastic electronics for a myriad of applications from displays to lighting to medical implants. In 2000, we were near the peak of inflated expectations for an immature technology. Arguably, it was a time of inflated expectations for *any* technology [1]. Flexible and ultra-thin display technology, in particular, has had numerous pundits repeatedly announcing that the technology has arrived. Firms like UDC, Plastic Logic, Philips Electronics (among many) made exciting claims and demonstrated impressive laboratory prototypes. Through 2007, revolutionary products had not come into the marketplace despite this early excitement. Many early champions have fallen silent and investment has dried up. So skepticism among developers and investors is not only acceptable, but reasonable.
Nothing that has happened so far is in any way unexpected. This cycle of inflated expectations followed by disappointment is well documented in tech cycles. A great model for this is the Gartner Group Hype Curve (see figure below) [2]. For those of you who are not students of technology history, a related technology, LCDs, went
through several hype curves. The first ever public demonstration of an LCD in 1971 by James Fergason was very quickly followed by predictions of ubiquitous wall mounted LCD TVs [3]. This prediction only took slightly longer than 35 years to come true (2007 marked the first time ever that LCD TV sets outsold CRT sets globally) [4], and LCD TVs were not even the first flat panel TV technology to reach the market. Plasma Display Panels were first introduced to consumers by Pioneer in 1997, while LCD TVs were not made available to consumers until after 2002 [5].
Technology cycles with similar time frames surround nearly every technology that affects modern life, from color television (25 years from invention to the first color broadcast), to automobiles (more than 100 years from invention to the introduction of the Model-T), to the internet (28 years).
The technology today is surpassing the Hype of the late 1990’s. Today, the technology has matured to the point that products are coming onto the market, including Sony’s OLED TV[6]; Polymer Vision’s Readius [7]; the Amazon Kindle [8] and the Sony e-reader [8], both of which have driven massive growth in production of E-Ink displays [9].
8 years of refining the technology, focusing on product development, building partnerships and creating viable businesses based on plastic electronics has shown great progress.
I predict that 2008 will be the year that The Hype became The Promise. Just a few months ago, in October 2007, the Amazon Kindle became the first commercially successful e-book reader, selling out within just 5 hours (!) of becoming available for purchase [8]. Both the Kindle and the similarly successful Sony e-reader incorporate flexible display technology from E-Ink [9].
Sony is now delivering OLED televisions into the consumer marketplace. Polymer Vision has announced plans to ship the first ever text reader with a foldable, paper-like display in H208 in Europe, and Plastic Logic just completed a flexible display fab in Dresden with hopes of delivering product by early 2009 [10]. Not too long ago, Motorola has demonstrated the ability to print low-performance electronics on 6-inch wide PVA rolls more than 100 meters long [11].
What Now
There remains a lot of work and opportunity in flexible, printed and organic electronics. On the technology side, there is the big question of how to power these devices – there are many questions around thin film and printed batteries. Materials are still an issue; for example, different printing methods have complex requirements for inks and charge carrier mobility is an issue in organic electronics. More importantly, standard equipment is not widely available. Many firms have actually had to invent the manufacturing equipment they use.
On the business side, there is a need for competitive business models and strategies. Product designers need to identify opportunities and unmet needs that can be uniquely solved with flexible electronics, instead of simply creating products that compete with firmly entrenched substitutes. It is on these fronts that truly revolutionary killer apps will be developed, as opposed to evolutionary improvements on existing technologies and products.
Displays may drive technology development, but product development has barely scratched the surface of the potential embedded in FPO electronics. From mass-production of thin-film solar cells, to e-textiles, to paper-thin lighting and more, the potential is only now starting to be real.
[1] One only needs to remember the Internet bubble and Allan Greenspan’s statement about “irrational exuberance” speech given at the American Enterprise Institute in December of 1996.
[6] Launched at CES 2008, January 7-10, 2008, in
The Start of a New Mobile Device Generation” Edzer Huitema, CTO Polymer Vision, USDC Flexible Display Conference, January 2008,
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