Industry
analyst firm NanoMarkets has just issued its latest report on the
thin-film battery market and in the report the firm predicts that the
business will create almost $900 million in revenues in the year 2016.
The report, “Thin-Film Batteries: A New Market Opportunity Assessment – 2011,” also projects that the value of products containing thin-film
batteries will reach approximately $14 billion by 2016.
This
report analyzes and quantifies the opportunities for the thin-film
batteries in a number of important sectors including RFID, smart
packaging, smartcards, electronic shelf labels, sensors, medical
implants and patches and semiconductor industry applications. It also
discusses the latest developments in battery chemistry and fabrication
technologies as well as the product market strategies of the leading
suppliers of thin-film batteries.
In
August, the NanoMarkets will publish an analysis of the printed battery
market and an assessment of new materials developments for Li-ion
batteries will follow in September.
Findings from the report:
- The
high energy densities of thin-film batteries combined with energy
harvesting devices promise a power source for remote sensing devices
that almost literally never needs to be recharged or replaced. As a
result, NanoMarkets expect the sensor market to be the largest
application for thin-film batteries, with consumption of thin-film
batteries by this sector reaching around $400 million by 2016. Sensors
for smart grids, military sensors and wireless sensor networks are seen
as providing particular opportunity for thin-film battery manufacturers
in the near future. - Although
thin-film batteries may prove too expensive for powering garden variety
smartcards, NanoMarkets believes that there are significant niches in
the smartcard market to support significant sales of thin-film
batteries. For example, biometric ID cards are expected to have longer
product lives than the average credit card and therefore need power
sources that themselves are long-lived. As a result, consumption of
thin-film batteries by the smartcard sector is expected to reach around
$280 million by 2011. - Thin-film
battery manufacturers are looking for ways to increase their
attractiveness to potential investors through expanded addressable
markets or by creating value-added products. Thus Planar Energy Devices
sees itself competing against conventional lithium ion batteries in a
broad range of applications while Cymbet and IPS see new opportunities
from battery/energy harvesting products combos.
