There are many cell phone problems that represent huge commercial opportunities over the coming decade as their form and function are transformed beyond recognition.

The supercapacitor industry closed last year (2013) with a continued double-digit growth. According to Maxwell Technologies' executives, China has been the main source of growth. New announcements confirm what IDTechEx has stated in recent years: the supercapacitor and the battery industry are the same.

One way that supercapacitors are developing faster than batteries is in the choice of format, from transfer printable ones for mobile phones to load-bearing structural components and smart skin for vehicles.

In this article we share some of the findings in the new IDTechEx report "Future Mobile Phone/Cell Phone Technology and Functions 2014-2024".

The total market value for electric unmanned aerial vehicles will reach over one Billion dollars by 2023 according to findings in the new IDTechEx report, "Electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) 2013-2023"

The total global gross value market for hybrid and pure electric vehicles will reach US$334 billion within the decade, from a current value of US$69 billion, forecast analysts IDTechEx.

Last week the annual IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA event featured 160 exhibiting companies, over 200 presentations and approximately 2,200 attendees. Exhibitor attendance grew by over 50% and attendees grew by over 35% compared to the previous year.

As the electric vehicle EV industry grows more than five-fold to well over $300 billion in 2024, those e-vehicles not bought primarily on up-front price will continue to dominate.

Next week the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting & USA 2013 event (www.EnergyHarvestingUSA.com ) will open in Santa Clara, CA - Nov 20-21.

There are just three weeks left until IDTechEx's Supercapacitors USA event in Santa Clara California, on November 20-21.

Supercapacitors are increasing the range of electric vehicles in several ways and by doing so they are hugely increasing the addressable market for those vehicles. Typically, they last for the life of the vehicle regardless of how many cycles are endured.

IDTechEx has just completed an intense study of Printed Electronics in Japan involving 35 visits to companies and institutions there and interviews and lectures at the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event there.

The chemical industry will end up with most of the added value from printed electronics, one of the fastest growing technologies in the world.

This article shares some of the research in the new IDTechEx report, "Range Extenders for Electric Vehicles Land, Water & Air 2013-2023" which covers all such vehicles, on land, on/under water and airborne.

Life is good for supercapacitors manufacturers and developers.

Tablet and smart phone sales reached 116 million and 675 million units in 2012, exhibiting a year-to-year growth of 43 and 94%, respectively. In contrast, desktop sales have declined. The market message is clear: consumers are demanding fully portable devices. This translates into a large and growing market opportunity for energy storage devices.

In this article we will briefly look at implementations in the rail transit sector, and the kind of technologies that are making their way onto trains, railways and waysides in order to reduce power consumption, maintenance costs and reliability of train services.

Flexible portable electronics, in order to retain their versatility would benefit from harvesters and batteries or supercapacitors on plastic substrates.

In 2013 the market size for gold ink for electronic and electrical applications is less than $1 million - used mainly for academic work and some early stage work in healthcare products. However, a new report from IDTechEx Research titled New Opportunities for Gold: Conductive Inks for the Electronics Industry 2013-2019 finds that with demand from medical applications, edge connectors and interfaces with organic materials such as sensors the market will growth to $50 million in 2018, in the "most likely" scenario.

Questions arise as to how much supercapacitors can improve if organisations more like NASA took over. After all, if supercapacitors can replace many batteries when, as today, they store one tenth of their energy, what will happen in the marketplace if they approach the theoretical ten times the lithium-ion battery figure while acting as a near-perfect "battery"?