Over the last 18 months IDTechEx has reported in Printed Electronics World and at our events on the repositioning of companies moving from a component supply proposition to actually building products. This addresses the gap in the supply chain of system integrators and product designers making things that people want to buy.
This week, Polyera was another company to follow that trend. The company is known in the printed and organic electronics community as developing organic semiconductors. It is now using these as a TFT backplane for an E-ink display, which is built into a wristband device where the display is flexible enough to be curved round the wrist, as pictured.
Phil Inagaki, CEO of Polyera, says, "Our team is thrilled to unveil the Wove Band, the world's first flexible display product made possible by Polyera Digital Fabric Technology. Wove is a device with an active-matrix display which can literally change shapes in the user's hands, a dream which has existed for a long time but was never previously possible. The introduction of such a device to the world is the culmination of a decade of work during which a passionate group of more than 100 Polyera scientists, engineers and designers have closely collaborated to bring a dream to reality."
Of course launching a device does not mean success but this is a great advancement in bringing the currently unloved organic semiconductor technology to market. We eagerly wait to see the response of consumers as the product comes to market in 2016.
Top image: Polyera
