Laminar Batteries - Missing the Big Opportunity?

Gary accepts that there is a market for such cells in standard shapes and perhaps to a standard performance. There is also a market for heavily customised designs and, to that, he adds a market where the very high volume product manufacturers make the batteries under license as part of their production line, the whole being integrated in one go. Dr. John Heitzinger of Soligie certainly sees scope for standard laminar batteries and Makku Paukku President of Enfucell says "I think it is a great idea" but he cautions that there will probably need to be different standards for performance of lithium vs. manganese dioxide zinc cells. IDTechEx nevertheless feels that standards for footprint and thickness could be the same for both technologies. Planar Energy Devices with its lithium laminar batteries with unusually high capacity tells us it is working towards industry standards. In addition, the company intends to make the first truly printed lithium batteries. Printing is the norm for the lower cost, lower capacity manganese dioxide zinc batteries though not for lithium, though Leeds Lithium Power makes them reel to reel. IDTechEx believes that there is scope for a large company to buy a few of these smaller players and finance a move to the big opportunity for replacing almost all coin cells with laminar cells more compatible with the planned ultra thin e-book, e-magazines and other electronic products of the future. Maybe forming a captive ISO specification, where anyone can participate, but all pay royalties to one supplier, would be a part of that. A billion dollar opportunity perhaps?