Business Management - Industry Trends

A dual Analog-Digital wristwatch using US E Ink’s electronic paper display technology was recently launched by Art Technology, Hong Kong. The E Ink technology depicts digital time with the look of electronic paper and can be read accurately and instantly from any angle - vastly improving on dull liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that typify previous digital watches. The customizable dial allows the owner to select among styles, from the precise detail of full numerals and indices to the simplicity of no markings all. The Phosphor™ branded luxury watches feature a bold geometry, generously oversized buttons and knobs, and a luxuriously thick strap. However what

The largest potential market for OLEDs is in wide area, low cost, flexible lighting, signage and displays. Here, the challenges include life, even distribution of voltage and the commissioning of low cost, high speed production, almost certainly by printing reel to reel. Seiko Epson Corporation, Japan reported on a joint paper with Universal Display Corporation, USA last week at the IDW Conference in Sapporo, Japan, significant progress in the development of P²OLED™ printable, phosphorescent OLED materials for use with solution-based manufacturing processes. Display manufacturers consider this a prospective solution for the cost-effective production of large-area OLED displays. These advances are the result of a three-year

Firstly, selling RFID to consumer goods companies mandated by major retailers usually breaks one of the fundamental rules of marketing “Never sell to someone who does not want to buy from you”. Most of the consumer goods companies in the USA see no payback from fitting the passive UHF labels mandated by retailers, indeed, they may have lost a mutual $100 million so far trying to do so, despite the RFID suppliers losing a similar sum selling tags and readers to them at a loss. The consumer goods companies are therefore quick to point out the technical problems and they use any other valid

The 2012 Printing Impressions 400 list of the largest printing companies in the United States and Canada as ranked by annual sales.

SAN FRANCISCO—557 delegates from 18 countries were present at the IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA event in San Francisco - the industry’s largest conference and exposition on the topic. The show featured the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Awards in recognition of outstanding achievement. The awards were presented by Dr Peter Harrop CEO of IDTechEx at a gala dinner held at The Bank of America Building in downtown San Francisco on November 13. Categories and winners: 1. Technical Development Materials Award Winner: Kovio 2. Technical Development Manufacturing Award Winner: Optomec 3. Technical Development Device Award Winner: Add-vision 4. Best New Product Development Award Winner: HelioVolt 5. Best

PROBABLY THE fastest area of growth in the entire printing spectrum is the sector for wide-format ink-jet production. A decade ago, this type of digital process was still in its infancy but, since that time, it has passed through many formats to become an accepted technology and not, simply, a novelty whose ultimate value was questionable. Today’s machines cover all budgets and a vast range of end applications and ink technologies. Wide-format production has become a relevant part of any printing exhibition that looks at current and future trends across all disciplines. With Drupa 2008 representing a major worldwide platform for new developments,

FLYING CARS and colonies in space were once seriously predicted to be a reality by now. Closer to home, though, experts also said that Adobe Photoshop and the Mac would never be acceptable for professional graphic arts applications. Any attempt to predict the course of technological development amounts to an educated guess at best. Even once a prototype has been developed, the scale-up to volume production can be problematic. Often, it is an unexpected development that leads to success. Printed electronics, security printing and lenticular are three technological developments that may hold opportunities for commercial printers. Each is still a work in process to

Printed electronics is a term that covers printed and potentially printed electronics and electrics. It is the basis of an emerging $300 billion business embracing transistors, memory, displays, solar cells, batteries, sensors, lasers and much more. This new electronics will appear as adhesive tape, wallpaper, billboards, labels, skin patches, smart packaging and books because it will be foldable, conformal, wide area, ultra low cost, edible, rollable, transparent and biodegradable as needed. Yes - there are transparent transistors, batteries, solar cells and more on the way and Kodak has recently patented edible RFID on medicine. And it will be pivotal to the future of mobile

PITTSBURGH—Printing industry profits increased slightly over the past year, back to the rates of the mid to late 1990s, according to the recently completed 2007 PIA/GATF Ratios Survey. The average printer’s before-tax profit on sales was 3.4 percent for the typical Ratios participant over this past year. This was an increase compared to 2.7 percent for 2006. It also is within the 3.0–3.4 percent range experienced from 1995–2001. Profit leaders, printers in the top 25 percent of profitability, saw profits decrease slightly to 10.1 percent, as compared to 10.3 percent in 2006. Despite this small decrease, profit as a percentage of sales for profit leaders remained

LADIES AND gentlemen, your attention please. Printing Impressions magazine is about to announce it has anointed a state as the printing capital of the United States. This decision was not arrived at easily. In determining which of our 50 was deserving of such rich accolades, we compiled a cracker jack team of experts: Sales and M&A guru Harris DeWese pored over 10 years’ worth of financial statements and cross-checked them using various sorting criteria. Chris Colville, a recently retired Consolidated Graphics senior executive, provided full analysis based on company balance sheets. The research team was a Who’s Who of the printing industry. Jim