As in case of many plastic applications, Europe could be losing the race for the huge new business of printed electronics and its revolutionary impact on society as Asia surges ahead in the field of printed electronics. Europe may not be able to counter this shift to Asia, despite having many more academic institutions working on the subject than East Asia, almost as many as in the USA.
As per a report by IDTechEx, amongst all Asian countries Japan seems to offer the most fertile, conducive environment, making it the prolific patent holder in the area of printed electronics. Japanese are the leaders for patents for LED and transistors, USA is the winner for Photovoltaic and lasers related patents and for memory cell, European and US inventors hold two patents between themselves for Sensors, and Japan is in the lead for others. In LED (essentially OLED), Europe lost out to Shunpei Yamazaki in Japan that has 104 patents granted in 2003-2005 period.
In Europe, a giant corporation that supplies the materials backs potentially printed electronics. On the other hand, in Japan, there is a chain of giants such as Sony, Matsushita, Canon, Sumitomo and Toshiba with major programs, usually right through to complete devices. Several of these giants are captive consumers of the developed materials. This gains significance in light of the fact that mega printing and packaging companies in East Asia such as Dai Nippon Printing and Toppan Printing are also heavily into printed electronics.

The table based on data by IDTechEx, displays the corporations involved the potentially largest sectors of printed and potentially printed electronics - OLEDs, transistors and photovoltaic.

Following are the developments in Europe in this sector:
Germany�s Leonhard Kurz, though not yet a giant, is an exception � as it continues to produce transistors and photovoltaics in two separate divisions. The company acquired Seimens� printed transistor business and licensed the printed photovoltaic process from Konarka.
Merck Chemical has bought several companies developing and selling materials for printed electronics, strongly supporting appropriate academic work simultaneously. BASF has recently boosted its efforts in this direction by licensing formulations for printable semiconductors and dielectrics from two companies.
A division of ST Microelectronics has recently filed numerous patent applications for carbon nanotubes for molecular and biomolecular memories, single-electron transistors based on functionalized metal nanoclusters and other long term prospects.
This trend in the European industry clearly reveals that consistency of purpose and major investment by European giants is almost limited to materials, OLED lighting, sensors and photovoltaics.
More than six other European giants have been divesting or shutting some or all of their post silicon printed and thin film electronics businesses. However, the East Asian giants do not seem to be doing so, making Europe a happy hunting ground for foreign companies and research organizations of printed and potentially printed electronics. As a result, many European leaders in DSSC solar cells, organic solar cells, etc, are now owned by foreigners - mainly American. The Japanese majors have joined the band wagon with Sumitomo Chemical buying CDT - a leader in polymer OLED IP.