I agree, there are already vendors in the market anxious to ship Li-poly batteries in their products. I'm one of them. I am just trying to caution the over-enthusiastic that Li-poly is not going to replace NiMH or lithium-ion overnight, or for that matter in a few years. It is a high-end augmentation of what is available. VLNC's batteries will not even exceed the energy density of standard Li-ion for a year or so after introduction. In other words, they are just starting out...they're not even an improvement over what exists (yet) from a capacity or runtime viewpoint.
Li-poly is exciting & marketable from the features of being very thin, and being the latest-greatest, which will always sell to someone. If you make your reputation from your high-end products (notebooks: Toshiba, IBM, Dell, HP, Compaq. cell phones: Motorola, Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson), you have to ship the latest-greatest as soon as you believe it will not burn the user's face off, or risk falling behind. This is why VLNC will sell all they can make - because they can't make that much, but it's OK because the market for the highest-end products is tiny compared to the overall market (yet it accounts for most of the press & prestige).
So VLNC as a company will not have a slow rampup. As soon as the factory is spewing product with good yield it will all get sold. From an industry-wide standpoint, Li-poly will be slow to shove aside other technologies because the volume manufacturing just isn't there. Billions have been spent on Li-ion factories already and the capacity does not come close to meeting worldwide demand, hence the high price premium over NiMH (2x price for 30% more runtime)which is relatively plentiful.
Bottom line: Li-poly will be in real products very soon. VLNC & ULBI will soon be getting revenues from their investments in research & factory equipment. LITH is a ways out but seems to be on the same track. Li-poly will not be the dominant product in the market, but everything made will be easily sold at good price premium for years to come. |
