52 The PCB Magazine • November 2016
Enterprise Wearables Find First Inflection
in Industrial and Field Service Markets
The warehouse and manufacturing vertical, along
with field services, represent one-quarter of the
wearable devices shipped to enterprise end users
in 2016. With device hardware improvements from
companies like Epson, Microsoft, ODG, and Vuzix,
ABI Research forecasts shipments to these segments
will more than triple to top 35 million units in 2021.
Four IC Industry Clusters Emerge with
China's 13th Five-Year Plan
According to the global market research firm
TrendForce, committed policy efforts and invest
-
ments from the Chinese government have resulted
in the formation of four IC industr
y clusters that are
respectively located in the country's
four major re-
gions of activities: the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl
River Delta, the Beijing-T
ianjin Bohai Sea region
and the Central-Western
region.
Energy-efficient Lighting Technology
Industry: Growing Demand for LEDs
Vital for Global Market
The global energy-efficient lighting technology mar-
ket is dominated by players such as OSRAM GmbH,
GE Lighting, and Royal Philips Electronics. Accord-
ing to Transparency Market Research, focusing on
the development of energy-efficient LED lighting is
likely to a popular strategy among leading players in
the global market in the coming years.
Energy Management: Highly Intelligent
Homes of the Future
For 18 months, Prof. Franz Hagn and his family ex-
perienced for themselves what it is like to live in a
house that not only produces its own energy,
but
also manages it intelligently.
The concept of the "e-
MOBILie" project also included an electric car. What
the results show: On a small scale, the pilot project
is a present-day implementation of the functions of
a smart grid of the future.
IoT Revolution Revitalizes Demand for
High-end Flexible Sensors
The global market for printed and flexible sensors is
predicted to reach $7.51 billion by 2020. By type,
the global printed and flexible sensors market will
be led by the biosensors segment, followed by the
Pizoelectric sensors segment.
Human Brain Project: Pilot Systems for
Interactive Supercomputer
The Jülich Supercomputing Centre has begun oper-
ation of two new pilot systems for an interactive su-
percomputer. The systems—JULIA, created by Cray,
and JURON from IBM and NVIDIA—are specifically
designed for applications in the neurosciences.
New 3-D Wiring Technique
Brings
Scalable Quantum Computers Closer
to Reality
Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Com
-
puting (IQC) at the University of Waterloo led the
development of a new extensible wiring technique
capable of
controlling superconducting quantum
bits, representing a significant step towards to the
realization of a scalable quantum computer.
DARPA's Microsystems Technology
Office Streamlines Contracting for
Innovators
DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO)
has a proud history of making seminal investments
in breakthrough technologies that ultimately be
-
came critical components in our electronics-filled
world, from flash memory to radio frequency (RF)
semiconductors to microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS).
T-rays
will 'Speed Up' Computer Memory
by a Factor of 1,000
Together with their colleagues from Germany and
the Netherlands, scientists at the Moscow Insti-
tute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have found
a way to significantly improve computer perfor-
mance.
IPC Releases PCB Industry Results
for August 2016
IPC—Association Connecting Electronics Indus-
tries announced the August 2016 findings from its
monthly North American PCB Statistical Program.
Electronics Industry News
Market Highlights