This year, the world's largest event on printed electronics, "printed Electronics USA" will reflect the widening government support for printed electronics. Beyond the burgeoning programs at universities and government research centers, this is particularly evident in military and electric vehicle work. The US Army reflects this in two presentations. One is an overview of materials printing capabilities and prototype development for US Army applications and the other concerns direct write approaches to nanoscale electronics.

IDTechEx has tracked the printed electronics market since 2002. We have conducted extensive research programs, run our own events internationally and attended most other relevant events. Being impartial, we state the good and the bad. So what have we learnt?

According to IDTechEx research in the new report "Brand Enhancement by Electronics in Packaging 2012-2022" the global demand for electronic smart packaging devices is currently at a tipping point and will grow rapidly from $0.03 billion in 2012 to $1.7 billion in 2022. The electronic packaging (e-packaging) market will remain primarily in consumer packaged goods CPG reaching 35 billion units that have electronic functionality in 2022.

This year's Printed Electronics USA will take place in Santa Clara on November 30 and December 1. Analysts IDTechEx who organise the largest event on the subject, have paid a lot of attention once more to the end user streams. Their presence and contributions to the latest instalment of the successful series of events will be appropriate to the new direction of this burgeoning industry.

Printed Electronics Europe in Düsseldorf grew again, remaining Europe's largest event on the subject.

The annual printed electronics award winners were announced on April 5th at the IDTechEx Awards

Over twenty million electric vehicles produced in 2010 will employ on-board energy harvesting to help charge the traction batteries. That includes both hybrid and pure electric vehicles.

Energy harvesters enabling micro-power generation provide new levels of efficiency and automation in the built environment, process control, vehicles and healthcare.

Excitingly, the subject has now moved beyond peer reviewed academic papers to doing business. The largest European event on the subject will again be Printed Electronics Europe in Düsseldorf Germany in April 5-6 (www.IDTechEx.com/peEurope) and it will be all about who can sell to whom and how this powerful enabling technology can transform society for the better as well as creating wealth.

Printed electronics is one of the most important new enabling technologies.

There are now other forms of energy harvesters developed initially at the micro level which are now being scaled to produce enough energy to replace or supplement grid power.

Printed electronics is associated with some orders, investments and acquisitions that are one hundred times as big as the largest two years ago.

The annual IDTechEx conference on the Future of Electric Vehicles - land, water and air held in San Jose, California saw 200 attendees with 12 exhibitors. The event, hosted the gala awards to recognise outstanding achievement in the industry. The chairman of IDTechEx Dr Peter Harrop opened the awards.

The fourth annual printed electronics winners were announced on Dec 1st at the IDTechEx Awards Dinner in Santa Clara, USA.

The Printed Electronics series of conferences and tradeshows hosted by IDTechEx are attended by a large number of end users from many verticals, including electronics, consumer packaged goods, healthcare, military, advertising & media and toy industries. These companies attend our events to meet with suppliers and preview what is currently available or what is becoming available in the near future.

The largest event in the world on the subject Printed Electronics USA 2010 (www.IDTechEx.com/peUSA) will once again have a growing minority of presentations on paper electronics.

A new quarterly hardcopy publication that guarantees to report and comment on what's happening in the world of electric and hybrid vehicles.

The fourth annual IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event was held in Hong Kong in mid October. The event this year had much more of a commercialization flair - companies discussing product opportunities and technologies that can be moved to high volume production.

Printed and partly printed electronics and electrics are not being applied to very expensive things or electronic things first. It is more about modernising printing more than it is about modernising electronics.

The electric vehicle business is over $33 billion today at ex factory prices but cars are less than half of that. As the market nearly quintuples over the next ten years, cars will rise to nearly 55% of the business but the devil is in the detail...