IDTechEx recently visited South Korea as part of a UK Trade and Investment mission. Here we summarise some highlights of the trip.

The annual printed electronics award winners were announced at the IDTechEx Awards Dinner in Berlin, Germany on April 3rd. The awards recognize outstanding progress in the development and commercialization of printed electronics, an industry that produces a huge amount of technical innovation which will be used in many products.

The 4th IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Storage event will be taking place on the 15th and 16th of May in Berlin, Germany and will cover recent progress and developments in energy harvesting, wireless sensors and related technologies.

At the forthcoming event, Printed Electronics and Photovoltaics Europe 3-4 April in Berlin, one third of the 94 presentations and masterclasses primarily concern organic compounds but two thirds primarily concern inorganic and composite devices. The organisers did not steer it that way: the customers did.

Three weeks remain until the IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2011 conference and tradeshow, the biggest event in the world on the topic. This year's tradeshow will be the largest Printed Electronics exhibition to date, with 105 exhibiting companies already confirmed to exhibit on the 46,000 sq.ft. tradeshow floor of the Santa Clara Convention Centre.

Graphene is considered a hot candidate for applications such as computers, displays, photovoltaics, and flexible electronics.

According to IDTechEx research in the new report Wireless Sensor Networks 2011-2021, WSN will grow rapidly from $0.45 billion in 2011 to $2 billion in 2021.

This week more than 250 people attended the second annual IDTechEx event on Energy Harvesting and Wireless Sensor Networks & Real Time Locating Systems. These two events are co-located given the overlap in topic and attendees were delighted with the breadth of subjects that were covered. The exhibition had trebled from last year to 20 exhibitors.

IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe award winners

IDTechEx projects that the market for passive RFID tags will grow to over $10 billion in sales by 2019. Much of it will continue to use silicon chips. Dr Peter Harrop forecasts the Printed RFID market for 2010.

As we enter the New Year IDTechEx look back and summarises some of the main global trends in 2009 and gives some predictions, and indeed areas of opportunity, for the New Year.

IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA Award Winners Announced This week the IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA event opened to more than 900 attendees from 28 countries - by far the World's largest event on the topic. Held in San Jose, CA, the event featured more end users than ever before and grew by almost 25% compared to the same event in 2008. The event featured the annual IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA Awards ceremony, aimed to recognize outstanding achievement.

This year has already seen a huge increase in the choice of electronic components that can be printed or are compatible with printing in that they are thin, flexible and can support further printed circuitry on top.

In the last year, the burgeoning printed and thin film electronics industry has greatly enhanced its repertoire and changed its priorities, encompassing such things as rapid commercialisation of disposable and invisible electronics.

IDTechEx finds that the market for printed and potentially printed electronics, including organics, inorganics and composites, will rise from $1.92 billion in 2009 to $57.16 billion in 2019.

At a time of financial uncertainty, companies know they must accelerate their move into the future. That is why there is a huge interest in printed electronics, a subject that pushes all the right buttons - environmental, affordable and leading to a new market of $300 billion that is just there for the taking. That is why the giant corporations are attending Printed Electronics USA, December 3-4 in San Jose, California.

Third Generation Active RFID is the Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) sometimes known as the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and characterized by the tag doubling as a reader and a so-called mesh network being used with a choice of sensors on each tag.

By value, we forecast that in 2009 the value of the RFID market will grow by 23% over 2008, and in 2010 it will grow by 25% over 2009 - not exponential, but still very strong growth.

One million transistors is not enough for the RFID chip in the new e-passports because, increasingly, they have to double as driver's licenses, multipurpose cards and other media.

A new range of transistors using thin films of organic or inorganic compounds as the semiconductors and gate dielectrics are being pursued by organizations in over 30 countries. The new IDTechEx report