Printed Electronics - the Big Picture

Talking trillions

Conventional electronics rarely rises to the billion mark. However, here we can be talking up to trillions. For instance, there are about ten trillion barcodes printed every year in the world. Radio Frequency Identification RFID tags can never drop below a few cents as long as they have a silicon chip in them and that means they will struggle to sell at even the 50 billion level, this year’s figure being only two billion despite the chip makers and tag makers incurring huge losses when they address the commodity applications. Printing can get that down to 0.1 cents and eliminate the cost of label application by printing the RFID directly onto the package or product just as 85% of barcodes are applied today.