CAMBRIDGE, MA – The market for printed and potentially printed electronics in 2012 will be $9.4 billion, says IDTechEx. This includes devices not yet printed, but that are moving toward being printed.

Of this market, 30% of the devices studied are made predominately by printing, and 6% are on a non-rigid substrate, says the firm.

Four main markets make up 98% of this figure, including OLED displays, driven by the need to differentiate smartphones. Samsung has led much of the investment, production and use of OLED displays in its smartphones, seeing significant sales over the past 12 months.

$4 billion will be spent on OLED displays in 2012, says the firm.

This year, $290 million will be spent on e-paper material (excluding the value of the TFT backplane). In e-readers, this technology has created a market of several billion dollars. However, the Holy Grail is color, with electrophoretic versions and other technologies (such as electrowetting) being pursued, according to IDTechEx.

$2.3 billion will be spent this year on conductive inks, used predominately for photovoltaic bus bars and other applications such as antennas, flexible connectors, smart packaging, etc. This excludes spending on conductive ink for shielding/static discharge applications and membrane circuits, where the sectors are mature. Almost all of this is flake-based ink, the firm says.

In addition, almost $2.6 billion will be spent on CIG-based photovoltaics in 2012, but almost all of this is non-printed and on glass.

IDTechEx believes the OLED display market will rise to $30 billion in 2022, and of that, 20% will be predominately printed and 17% on a non-rigid substrate.

OLED lighting is expected to become a $1 billion market by 2019. OLED lighting panels need to scale up in size to reduce cost and face competition from LED lighting, which is now making inroads into most forms of lighting, in addition to experiencing new technical developments such as printed LED lighting, says the firm.

While metal flake ink is predominately used today for screen printing PV bus bars, interest is growing to use inkjet printable ink to reduce the risk of breaking the ever-thinning silicon PV cell by having a non-contact deposition method, says IDTechEx. Particle-free metallic ink, grapheme-based inks, and copper are now in development or commercial use in a range of applications, including tamper and theft monitoring of retail packages.

Indium Tin Oxide is still more than 95% of the $3.5 billion transparent conductive film market. Indium is subject to supply restriction, and its price has varied by a magnitude in the last ten years. It is required primarily for photovoltaics, displays and touch screen applications. Alternatives to ITO include transparent organic materials, finely printed conductive grid meshes and other ways of patterning metal 'strands'. Some even use copper rather than silver to reduce cost. Others are progressing carbon nanotubes and graphene as a viable alternative, and companies with different technologies are beginning to make some inroads, particularly in touch screen panel applications, says IDTechEx.

Ten years from now, of all the components assessed, IDTechEx finds that the market opportunity will be $63 billion. However, of that, 45% of the components will be predominately printed and 33% on a non-rigid substrate.

LOS ANGELES -- Ducommun LaBarge Technologies today reported fourth-quarter net sales rose to $119.4 million from $36.2 million a year ago, primarily due to the acquisition of LaBarge last year.

WASHINGTON -- Implementation of a 2008 law mandating rear-view or "back-up" cameras on US vehicles has been delayed -- again -- but the rule ultimately will be a boon to electronics makers.

WASHINGTON, DC — The 90-day moving average worldwide semiconductor sales fell 8.8% year-over-year in January on typical seasonality.

ATLANTA -- Industrial hygiene expert Kal Kawar this week will moderate a chat on MSDS management, raw material disclosure compliance and product stewardship at PCB Chat.

PHILADELPHIA -- Global smartphone shipments fell an estimated 1.2% year-over-year in the first quarter, says Canaccord Genuity's top tech analyst.

SANTA CLARA, CA— Mobile PC unit sales outpaced those of desktops in China for the first time in the second half of 2011, according to a new report.

EL SEGUNDO, CA -- Elpida Memory's bankruptcy will benefit its competitors in the dynamic random access memory market, reducing supply and boosting pricing and revenue in the second half of the year, a top research analyst asserts.

PARIS -- Asteelflash has appointed Chuck Thistle vice president of business development for the Americas, responsible for developing and implementing the EMS company's sales initiatives and strategies to acquire new business.

BANNOCKBURN, IL – Doug Pauls has been elected to a two-year term as chair of the IPC Technical Activities Executive Committee.

The TAEC chair is elected by vote of the IPC general committee chairmen. Pauls, a principal materials and process engineer at Rockwell Collins, is general chairman of IPC’s Cleaning and Coating Committees.

He succeeds Mel Parrish of STI Electronics.

SCHAUMBURG, IL – Omron Industrial Automation and Omron Scientific Technologies announced an internal realignment of support for machine automation systems and safeguarding.

The sales and support organizations of the two will report to the same management, while maintaining individual expertise in established areas at their current locations.

The path to market using distributors remains unchanged: Those specializing in either automation or safety will continue with that product portfolio; those distributors authorized for both will support both product categories.

Internal change takes effect April 1.

The goals of the new arrangement include strengthening automation competency; presenting one Omron automation company; providing employee enrichment, and transforming the company.

The realignment consolidates internal management responsibilities for automation and safety sales and support into three regions: US and Canada; Mexico and Latin America; and Brazil.

FRAMINGHAM, MA – Factory revenue in the worldwide server market decreased 7.2% year-over-year to $14.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, says International Data Corp.

This was the first quarterly decline in factory revenue in two years, the firm notes. Worldwide server shipments increased 2% to 2.2 million units in the quarter compared with the year-ago period. For full-year 2011, worldwide server revenue increased 5.8% to $52.3 billion year-over-year, while worldwide unit shipments increased 4.2% to 8.3 million units, says IDC.

On a year-over-year basis, all three classes of servers experienced decreased factory revenue totals in the fourth quarter. Volume systems experienced a 2% year-over-year factory revenue decline to $8.8 billion, while midrange revenue decreased 4.6% to $1.8 billion compared to the same period in 2010.

Additionally, high-end system revenue declined 18.4% to $3.7 billion. This is the first time all three server classes have experienced year-over-year declines in revenue since the third quarter of 2009, according to IDC.

IBM held onto the number one spot in the worldwide server systems market, with 36.5% market share in factory revenue for the fourth quarter, as revenue declined 7.6% year-over-year. IBM experienced continued improvement in demand for its power systems, while revenue for its System Z mainframes declined significantly in the quarter.

HP held the number two spot, with 26.4% share for the quarter, as revenue decreased 16.2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. HP experienced demand challenges for both its x86-based ProLiant servers and Itanium-based Integrity servers in the quarter.

Dell maintained third place, with 14.8% factory revenue market share. Dell was the only top five server vendor to grow in the fourth quarter, experiencing 9.7% year-over-year revenue growth.

Fourth-ranked Oracle experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 11.5% to a 5.2% share of market, while Fujitsu, ranked number five, experienced a 10.5% decrease in factory revenue.

Linux server demand was positively impacted by high-performance computing and cloud infrastructure deployments, as hardware revenue improved 2.2% year-over-year to $2.6 billion, says IDC. Linux servers now represent 18.4% of all server revenue, up 1.7 percentage points compared with the fourth quarter of 2010.

Microsoft Windows server demand subsided slightly during the period, as hardware revenue decreased 1.5% year-over-year. Quarterly revenue of $6.5 billion for Windows servers represented 45.8% of overall quarterly factory revenue, up 2.6 points over the prior year's quarter.

Unix servers experienced a revenue decline of 10.7% year-over-year to $3.4 billion, representing 24.2% of quarterly server revenue for the quarter. IBM grew Unix server revenue 2.5% year-over-year and gained 7.9 points of Unix server market share compared with the fourth quarter of 2010.

In anticipation of Intel's Sandy Bridge server launch in the first quarter of this year, growth in the x86 server market slowed somewhat in the prior quarter, declining 1.7% to $9.1 billion worldwide, as unit shipments increased 2.9% to 2.1 million servers. Even with the slowdown, this was still the second highest quarterly revenue ever reported for x86 servers, as the architecture accounted for 64.1% of all server spending. Although HP's x86 factory revenue declined 11.7%, it continued to lead the market with 33.3% revenue share. Dell experienced the sharpest growth and retained second place, securing 23% revenue share – a 2.4 point year-over-year share gain. IBM continues to hold third place with 18.2% revenue share, while Fujitsu and Oracle hold 3.1% and 2.7% share, respectively. As a result of a strong demand throughout the year, worldwide x86 server revenue for 2011 increased 7.7% to $34.4 billion, while worldwide x86 unit shipments increased 3.7% to 8 million units.

The blade market continued to experience growth in the fourth quarter, with factory revenue increasing 8.3% year-over-year, while shipment growth increased 1.7% year-over-year. Overall, bladed servers, including x86, EPIC, and RISC blades, accounted for $2.3 billion in revenues, representing 16.1% of quarterly server market revenue.

IDC data shows that 89.6% of all blade revenue is driven by x86-based blades, which now represent 22.5% of all x86 server revenue. HP maintained the number one spot in the server blade market in the fourth quarter, with 47.4% revenue share, while IBM generated 21.5% revenue share. Cisco and Dell rounded out the top four blade server vendors with 11% and 8.7% factory revenue share, gaining 5.3 and 1.3 points of blade market share, respectively.

Density optimized server demand grew 33.8% year-over-year in the quarter to $458 million, as unit shipments increased 51.5% to 132,876 servers. Density optimized servers now represent 3.2% of all server revenue and 6.1% of all server shipments. Dell maintained the number one spot in the density optimized market with 45.2% revenue share, while HP finished second with 15.5% revenue share.