Report Says Revenues from Thin-Film Batteries to Reach Almost $900 million by 2016

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 is part of NanoMarkets' ongoing coverage of novel energy storage solutions. In August the company will publish an analysis of the printed battery market and an assessment of new materials developments for Li-ion batteries will follow in September. More details of these and other NanoMarkets reports can be found at www.nanomarkets.net. NanoMarkets has been covering the thin-film and printed battery since 2006.

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. This report also discussed the latest developments in battery chemistry and fabrication technologies as well as the product market strategies of the leading suppliers of thin-film batteries. It also includes a detailed eight-year forecast of thin-film batteries for all of the applications both in volume and value terms as well as breakouts by battery chemistry and long-term forecasts of the value of products that use thin-film batteries.
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.