There is a lot of chatter about three interesting opportunities for printers: security printing, printed electronics and lenticular printing.

By Mark Smith

Today, conductive inks, sensors and OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays account for almost all of that volume, the firm says, with 31.6 percent of these electronics already being fully or partially printed. That will rise to 90.3 percent by 2017, projects the Cambridge, Mass., firm.

The bad news: Aspects of the process are keeping offset lithography in the “possible future development” category. Also, much of the forecasted market potential of printed electronics is in making components for other manufacturing operations that may set it up as a captive process.