Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Market News

Market News

TOKYO -- The JPCA Show is typically not one where many orders are placed on the floor. Rather, specifications are discussed, tires on equipment are kicked, materials are introduced, and the exhibition of evolutionary progressions is the norm. And yet, equipment suppliers were in many cases optimistic.

SHANGHAI, CHINA – The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) will hold its workshop in Shanghai on July 28, to allow the electronics industry to view and present feedback on the 2009 iNEMI Roadmap.

SANTA CLARA, CA – Agilent Technologies has acquired the assets of Taiwan-based Escort Instruments, a supplier of low-cost test and measurement instruments and a subsidiary of Unitech Printed Circuit Board.

Unitech had a 60% stake in Escort Instruments. The purchase involves about NT$100 to 150 million (US$ 3.3 to 4.2 million) worth of assets. The acquisition includes Escort's R&D, marketing, intellectual property (IP) and the majority of the subsidiary's low-cost instrument product portfolio, Agilent said. The purchase should be completed in July.

SAN JOSE – The industry is at an interesting time in history because macroeconomics is struggling, yet the semiconductor market will continue to grow over the next three years, said George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- RTI International has developed in new technique that may improve computer performance and significantly change the manufacturing process for electronics by eliminating the need for organic substrates.

EL SEGUNDO, CA – iSuppli Corp. forecasts the total flexible display market will reach $2.8 billion by 2013, up 35 times from about $80 million in 2007.

Flexible displays are being used for a multitude of products, including e-readers/e-paper, electronic display cards, electronic shelf labels, automotive applications, clothing/wearable displays, removable storage devices and point-of-purchase/public signage and advertisements.

“Flexible displays are intuitively appealing to end users and product designers because of their ruggedness, thinness, light weight and novelty,” said Jennifer Colegrove, Ph.D., senior analyst for emerging displays at iSuppli. “Such displays also offer manufacturers the potential for inexpensive fabrication because they can be made using new printing methods or roll-to-roll processing. Furthermore, flexible displays have the advantage of easy and relatively inexpensive shipping and safety handling compared to conventional rigid screens. When flexible displays break, they don’t have any sharp edges that can cause injuries or further damage.”

Before this year, there were no active matrix flexible displays that could provide the kind of image quality that users expect from their LCD-TVs and PC monitors, says iSuppli. Because of this, 2008 represents “Year One” for the AM flexible display market.

More than a dozen display technologies can be made into flexible screens, including traditional LCD, bi-stable LCD, OLED, electrophoretic, electrochromic and Electroluminescent.