Touch user interfaces have made significant advances in the consumer electronics market particularly for mobile phones and notebook computers, opening the door for adoption in other applications including white goods, computer peripherals, medical equipment, and instrumentation. Synaptics made its debut in the home appliance market earlier this year with the launch of the Samsung Hauzen ZERO air conditioner.
The standout products on day three of the SID 2010 conference is Universal Display's new PHOLED display architecture with a unique four-color, sub-pixel design, which promises to drive commercial development of all-phosphorescent active-matrix OLEDs and Sony's tiny rollable OLED display that can wrap around a pencil.
Smaller distributors were the only ones to post sales gains in 2009. Interestingly, two of the five distributors that posted growth last year -- Interstate Connecting Components and Sherburn Electronics -- derive 100 percent of their sales from interconnect products. Both of them also target the military/aerospace industry. Here are the top 10 sales leaders by ICs, passives/electromechanical devices, interconnects and computer products as well as sales growth.
Green handset shipments to reach nearly 500M units by 2014, says researcher
Hampshire, England — Global shipments of green handsets could reach 485 million units by 2014, driven primarily by consumer demand for environmentally-friendly mobile devices, according to Juniper Research.
The report, Green Mobile Handsets & Applications: Strategies, Scenarios & Forecasts 2009-2014, also indicates that even with an incremental attitude shift by consumers, numbers will still grow from 250,000 shipments in 2009 to over 105 million by 2014.
“With manufacturers only now beginning to introduce green handsets, shipment volumes are relatively low in all cases. Moving forward, we should not expect to see production lines of completely green phones, but a gradual move to introducing green elements throughout devices,” said Dr. Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research and lead author for the report, in a statement.
The average mobile user is responsible for around 25 kg of CO2 emissions per year for a collective total of 93 Mt (megatons) of CO2 globally at the end of 2008, according to the report. Eco-applications offer potential for the mobile industry to reduce CO2 emissions above and beyond its own direct and indirect emissions by exerting a positive influence on consumer behavior, according to the report.
A key finding shows that network operators and handset vendors should increase their promotion of handset take-back initiatives, and increase take-back targets.
The report offers six-year forecasting for key market parameters including maintaining stable CO2 footprints, electricity costs, no-load CO2 emissions and recycled/refurbished handsets.
The market researcher also offers a Green Handsets white paper.
NXP offers a low-power IC aimed at MPPT applications using PV cells or fuel cells. 
C&K Components offers a series of low-cost, miniature slide switches. The OS Series of RoHS-compliant switches feature a new high-temperature option for lead-free soldering.