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Living in a wireless-less world: Initial reflections on Flexible Displays and Electronics 2007 confe |
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Jun 22, 2007 at 11:01 AM |
Be very wary of a hotel that says it offers "free, high-speed wireless Internet." After numerous negative experiences with bogus signals and connections, when will I learn? Again, my plans to file a few postings on Chip Shots, in the relative after-hours comfort of my hotel room, after attending a day full of conference presentations---in this case at the Flexible Displays and Electronics 2007 event completed yesterday in Oakland---were thwarted by the lousy wireless connection at the Best Western where I stayed.
With a weak signal both nights (and mornings), I got fed up after barely being able to read and answer my email, let alone write the blog.
But enough carping.
The conference provided progress-report updates as well as fresh, intriguing info---from familiar and new faces/sources---on current activities in the flexible, printed, and organic (FPO) electronics sector, with most presentations emanating from the display segment. Rather than try and present one long overview of the event here, I'll pop up a few different postings over the next week or so. (In another part of the Interweb, I will also have a short news story about the conference that will go live on smalltimes.com by the middle of next week.)
The amiable, enthusiastic Stuart Evans, conference chair and vice chairman of Plastic Logic (one of the vanguard printed/flexible display companies), kicked things off. I'd heard or read variations of presentations on the coming "Reading Revolution" enabled by flex display-enabled e-readers before, but not sprinkled with Stuart's quips. As he spoke (and as subsequent speakers soldiered on over the two days), a charming ambient-noise soundtrack played intermittently--the sounds of trains tooting their horns and rumbling down the tracks that cut through the Jack London Square area near the conference hotel.
When reviewing his companies' history and funding details, Stuart noted that "$150 million is quite a lot of money---and it might even be enough." In explaining how he believes that the creation of well-designed "iconic products" (transistor radio, Walkman, Blackberry, etc.) is one key to the ultimate success of flexible e-readers, he said "one of the triumphs of the iPod is when you pick it up, you want it." (When he held one of Sony's rigid-display e-readers in his hand, he evidently did not feel the same acquisitional imperative.)
As for Plastic Logic's own plans, Stuart told the audience that the cornerstone ceremony for the company's Dresden factory was held May 23. Plans are on track for completing the cleanroom by the end of 2007---he told me later that they wanted to have the building done in time for the team "to be home for Christmas." Tools have been ordered and will be installed/kitted starting in January 2008, with the first products rolling off the line by the second half of 2008 and shipped by early 2009. The company expects to produce more than a million displays in 2009.
The exuberant cheerleader for FPO displays' market potential showed a chart projecting e-reader volumes in excess of 40 million by 2010 (of which a portion will be of the flexible variety). He believes there is "no question [it] is going to be a billion-dollar business." Citing e-books as a "sweetspot" in the FPO display category, Stuart quipped to me that "you don't forecast the future, you create the future."
Are flexible e-books, as one attendee wondered about many of the products/concepts he heard discussed at the conference, "a solution in search of a problem?" Or will they become one of the first successfully disruptive products in a coming FPO electronics revolution? That remains the unanswered multibillion-dollar question.
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