Category Archives: ITO replacement

SEMI FLEX Singapore 2016 Conference is very successful

October 11, 2016

I just returned from the SEMI FLEX Southeast Asia 2016 Conference, at the beautiful Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. It’s a very successful conference with all seats sold out several days before. This is my first time to visit Singapore. It’s my honor to meet some of you in person.

Figure 1. The Marina Bay Sands is a spectacular architecture that combines hotel, exhibition & conference center, shopping center and casino.

Photo by: Touch Display Research Inc.

The president of SEMI Southeast Asia, Mr. NG Kai Fai gave a welcome speech at the opening ceremony.

Figure: SEMI Southeast Asia’s Mr. NG Kai Fai gave welcome speech

Photo by: Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, Touch Display Research.

On behalf of Touch Display Research, I gave an invited presentation on flexible display and flexible touch: technologies and market forecast.

Figure: Dr. Jennifer Colegrove’s presenting slide

Source: Touch Display Research

This conference also have many exhibitors. More analysis and review of the SEMI FLEX Southeast Asia 2016 Conference can be found in the “Touch and Emerging Display” October monthly report.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Automotive company Faurecia Invests in Canatu

September 30, 2016

Last month, Canatu announced it received 22 million Euros funding. One of the new significant investor is an automotive company.

Today, Canatu announced that automotive investor is Faurecia.

Faurecia is a France-headquartered automotive system integrator with 103K employees, and 21 billion Euro revenue in 2015. Faurecia has three Business Groups: Automotive Seating, Emissions Control Technologies, and Interior Systems.

“Touch is a very natural and intuitive way of interacting and will become ubiquitous in the car interior. We are proud to have our CNB Film to be a key enabler in bringing Faurecia’s visions of Smart Surfaces and Intuitive Connectivity into life”, says the new CEO Juha Kokkonen from Canatu.

“This is an important step in the evolution of our interior systems offering towards the move to smart surfaces, driven by the fusion between electronics and surface decorations. Coupling Faurecia’s position as Lead Architect of a new Customer Experience and Canatu’s unique CNB films, we are convinced that the combination will rapidly offer automotive-level solutions tailored to end-consumers’ advanced needs” explains Mr. David Weill, VP Marketing and Business Development at Faurecia Interior Systems.

In the ITO Replacement—Non-ITO Transparent Conductor Technologies, Supply Chain and Market Forecast 2016 Report, sixth edition, Touch Display Research analyzed over 240 companies and research institutes working on advanced transparent conductive (TC) materials. The report provides a detailed analysis of metal mesh, silver nanowire, carbon nano tube (CNT), conductive polymer, graphene, and other technologies.

Touch Display Research forecasts that the ITO-replacement market will reach $13 billion by 2023.

Figure: ITO replacement comparison chart

Source: Touch Display Research Inc., ITO-Replacement Report, 2016

In the recently published “Automotive touch, display, ADAS and touchless HMI 2016 report,” Touch Display Research Inc., analyzes automotive touch screen, display, ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistant System), and touchless human-machine-interaction (HMI). More than 500 companies working on automotive technologies are profiled in the report, which includes over 100 automotive companies, over 200 touch screen companies, over 200 touchless human-machine-interaction (HMI) companies and about 30 display companies.

The automotive industry’s adoption of new technologies has accelerated in the past couples of years. More and more touch screens and displays are integrated in the automobiles for better infotainment, intuitive control, and safety.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Touch screen with ITO-replacement going to mainstream

June 15, 2016

Touch screen with ITO-replacement is gaining momentum for >50-inch sizes category. We can see this trend at SID 2016 DisplayWeek.

3M showed 55-inch touch table with metal mesh touch screen.

C3Nano demonstrated 55-inch silver nanowire transparent conductor touch display.

Microsoft’s keynote discussed their 55-inch and 84-inch interactive Surface Hub that can sense both finger touch and active pen.

Touch Display Research forecasts that the ITO-replacement market will reach $13 billion by 2023.

Figure: ITO replacement comparison chart

Source: Touch Display Research Inc., ITO-Replacement Report, 2016

The ITO-replacement industry has made good progress in the touch panel and other applications in the past two years. However, not all companies are growing and you need to be very selective. The specifications of over thirty metal mesh suppliers are compared side-by-side in one chart in the Excel database.

We forecast that ITO-replacement will become the major transparent conductor for touch panels after 2021. ITO will be the minor transparent conductor for touch panels.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

SID 2016 Monday Seminar: from mainstream to emerging display

May 25, 2016

SID 2016 DisplayWeek is held in San Francisco, California this week. I taught a seminar on Monday morning, titled “Display Market Forecast –LCD, OLED, e-paper and touch, from main stream to emerging display”.

I’m honored to have been teaching Monday Seminar for 3 years at SID DisplayWeek. According to the conference organizer, there are over 600 attendees for the Monday seminar this year, which is a record high in SID history.

During the 90-min seminar, I first listed the hot trends in display industry in 2016 and 2017. Then I provided the global display industry market forecast to 2026. The overall display industry growth is slowing down but there are hot trends in many areas. Then I discuss the new opportunities in display market: quantum dot display, flexible and curved LCD display, high resolution, OLED display, e-paper display, embedded touch screen, active pen and touchless human-machine-interaction sensors.

Figure: Dr. Colegrove taught Monday Seminar at SID 2016 DisplayWeek.

Photo credit: Jinzenji-san at Japan Display Inc.

More and more people joined the seminar, many of them had to stand for the one and half an hour seminar. From the questions the attendee asked at the Q&A session, I believe many people are interested in 3 areas: quantum dot, flexible display, touch screen.

More analysis can be found in the “Quantum dot 2016 report”, “Flexible, curved and foldable display report”, Touch and Emerging Display monthly report, June 2016 issue.

For those audiences who has given me your name cards, I’ll send you one monthly report– “Touch and Emerging Display report”– for free next week.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Two new quantum dot companies; metal mesh adopted in home appliances

May 4, 2016

The emerging display and touch industry are constantly changing. We want to make sure our clients have the best market intelligence to stay on top of the trends.

Quantum dot display component and lighting market will grow to $10.8 Billion by 2026. There are two new companies joined the quantum dot supply chain recently. Their reported spectrum Full Width of Half Maximum (FWHM) is less than 20 nm for green color. How did they achieve that? What type of material are they using? What’s their business plan?

Figure: New quantum dot companies

source: Touch Display Research, April 2016

ITO-replacement industry is growing rapidly, but not all companies are growing. Metal mesh touch panels made big progress recently–were adopted in home appliances in the market. Some ITO-replacement companies are acquired by others. Some companies are narrowing their business focus. Some companies are expanding to more products now. Which companies are those? What’s the impact?

Our mission is to empower your business strategic planning for the future. More detail analysis can be found in the Touch and Emerging Display monthly report. The report is $600 per month, or $1990 for one year (12 monthly reports).

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Cima and Anoto Active Pen for Large Touch Displays

February 20, 2016

At ISE (Integrated Systems Europe) 2016, Cima Nanotech booth showcased large size touch display with Anoto’s active pen. The touch sensor is using ITO-replacement–Cima’s SANTE transparent conductor technology. The Anoto’s active pen is based on camera with micro dot technology.

Figure 1. Cima Nanotech with Anoto active pen at ISE 2016

Photo source: Display Daily, Feb 2016

The active pen industry landscape has changed dramatically in recent 2 years: The number of companies actively working on active pen technology has increased from 60 companies in 2014 to over 100 companies in 2016.

Touch Display Research defines active pen as a pen with an electronic circuit. Some active pens have an integrated battery in it, and others don’t. A passive pen has neither an electronic circuit nor a battery. In the recently published “Active Pen Technologies, Supply Chain and Market Forecast 2016 Report”, Second Edition, Touch Display Research Inc., analyzed more than twenty digital pen technologies, which include thirteen active pen technologies and eight passive pen technologies.

Figure 2: Active pen and passive pen summary and comparison (Full table is in the excel database)

Source: Touch Display Research, Active pen technologies supply chain and market forecast 2016 report.

Digital pen input is very useful in education, certain language input, medical, finance, industry applications, and content creation. Active pen technology is superior to passive in terms of accuracy, pressure sensing, and input of fine line. We forecast that active pen usage will have rapid growth in the next several years.

More analysis of active pen and active pen market forecast can be found in the “Active Pen Technologies, Supply Chain and Market Forecast 2016 Report”. More analysis of ITO-replacement transparent conductor for large size touch display can be found in the “ITO-replacement 2016 report”.

You can subscribe on our website: www.touchdisplayresearch.com in the Market Research report page or by email: jc@touchdisplayresearch.com

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

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About Touch Display Research Inc.

Touch Display Research, Inc. (www.TouchDisplayResearch.com) is an independent technology market research and consulting firm specializing in touch screen and emerging display technologies such as OLED displays, OLED lighting, flexible displays, e-paper displays, ITO-replacement, Active pen, 3D displays, near-eye displays, pocket projectors, quantum dots, gesture controls, voice controls, and eye controls. Touch Display Research provides standard reports, consulting projects, and due diligence for touch suppliers, display manufacturers, consumer electronics ODMs/OEMs, material suppliers, investor companies, venture capitalists, and companies who are merging or acquiring companies in the touch screen, display, and materials industry. We are member of FlexTech Alliance and SID.

Cambrios silver nanowire in solar cell mass production

December 9, 2015

Recently, Cambrios invited Touch Display Research for an update briefing at their facility in Sunnyvale, California. I had a chance to catch up with my old industry friends: Cambrios’ CEO Mr. John Lemoncheck, VP of marketing Mr. Sri Peruvemba and Senior Director of marketing Mr. Raghu Gupta. They showed me a flexible portable solar cell. Crystalsol based in Austria made the flexible solar panel with Cambrio’s silver nanowire transparent conductor–ClearOhm. The final solar product is selling for $70 each in Asia and Africa currently (not in US yet).

Figure 1. Flexible solar cell using Cambrios silver nanowire ClearOhm.

Photo by: Jennifer Colegrove

We also discussed Cambrios’ other design-wins in the touch panel side and the status of their joint venture with TPK.

More analysis can be found in the “Touch and Emerging Display monthly report”, December 2015 report. It is in PDF format with over 50 pages and available immediately. License for this single month report is $600; license for 1 year (12 monthly reports) is $1900. You can subscribe on our website in the Market research report page.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Cima Touch—joint venture of Foxconn and Cima Nanotech for ITO replacement

September 3, 2015

I just came back from the trip of Touch Taiwan and IDMC (International Display Manufacturing Conference) 2015 conference. Earlier this week, we blogged about LG Display keynote on flexible OLED display, and Konica Minolta keynote on flexible OLED lighting, and AUO quantum dot TV adopted 3M and Nanosys material.

Another hot trend at Touch Taiwan 2015 is the ITO-replacement material for touch panels. At Touch Taiwan, Cima Nanotech announced its new joint venture with Foxconn: Cima Touch. Both companies will sell SANTE® ProTouch™ modules through Cima Touch.

Figure 1: Cima demonstrates 65” projected capacitive at Touch Taiwan 2015

Photo by: Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, Touch Display Research Inc.

Last year, Cima Nanotech and Amdolla showed a 42” projected capacitive touch screen at SID 2014.

In the newly published “ITO-replacement: non ITO transparent conductor technologies and market forecast 2015 report”, 5^th edition, Touch Display Research analyzes metal mesh, silver nanowire, conductive polymer, carbon nanotube, graphene and other transparent conductor materials. Touch Display Research forecasts that the ITO-replacement market will reach $10.9 Billion by 2022.

Figure 2. ITO-replacement: non-ITO transparent conductor market forecast 2015 to 2022

Source: Touch Display Research, ITO replacement: non-ITO Transparent Conductor Technologies and Market Forecast 2015 Report, 2015

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Kodak touch sensor after UniPixel

July 15, 2015

I recently had a chance to interview Kodak’s VP of Functional Printing group, Mr. Brian Marks. Mr. Marks indicated Kodak is currently working on two metal mesh technologies: 1. Silver metal mesh, and 2. Copper metal mesh.

As we covered before in Touch and Emerging Display monthly report, UniPixel bought the Atmel’s XSense business and facility in Colorado in April 2015.

On April 27, 2015, Kodak announced it is committed to moving forward independently with development of copper mesh touch sensor technology, following UniPixel’s decision to withdraw from joint activities with Kodak.

“We are pleased to have full control over the technology development program and excited about the business opportunities ahead. We expect to have products based on this technology in the market before the end of this year,” said Philip Cullimore, President – Enterprise Inkjet Systems Division and Micro 3D Printing & Packaging Division.

UniPixel and Kodak signed partnership agreement back in 2013. But after about 2 years, the partnership broke up.

In the recently published “ITO-replacement: non-ITO transparent conductor technologies and market forecast 2015 report“, Touch Display Research forecast the non-ITO transparent conductor market will have rapid growth and reach $10.9 billion in 2022.

Figure: ITO-replacement market forecast.

Source: Touch Display Research Inc. ITO-replacement 2015 report.

More analyst about Kodak touch sensor technologies, supply chain and business will be in the “Touch and Emerging Display monthly report”, July 2015 issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Nissha partners with C3Nano

May 8, 2015

Today, Nissha and C3Nano announced they are partnering to develop silver nanowire type transparent conductor for touch sensor applications.

Touch Display Research had a chance to talk to C3Nano’s CEO, Mr. Cliff Morris recently. He indicated being selected by Nissha as a development partner validates C3nano’s position as a performance leader in TCFs.

Our survey found that the adoption of silver nanowire and metal mesh are accelerating. In the newly published ITO-replacement 2015 report, Touch Display Research forecast ITO-replacement market will grow to 10.9 Billion by 2022.

Figure. ITO-replacement market forecast 2015 to 2022.

Source: Touch Display Research, ITO-replacement report, May 2015.

There are 25 companies and research institutes working on silver nanowire transparent conductor currently. Nissha is actually part of another joint venture with Cambrios and TPK on silver nanowire since 2013. More analysis can be found in the Touch and Emerging Display monthly report, May 2015 issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team