TechnoFusion

The Asian Age India | Kishore Butani

Mumbai: Portable battery and power technologies will be the major driving forces in the IT and electronics industry.

Computer giants and laptop makers are researching new ways to make the inner workings of computers more power efficient. The most important innovations in the coming years would revolve around prolonging battery life and reducing the weight of laptops, said Mr Noel Hon Chia Chun, chairman, NEC Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd, speaking exclusively to this newspaper on the sidelines of the launch of the first biometric computers in India on Friday.

NEC, the $50 billion IT, network and electron devices solutions provider, announced its entry into India, with its wide range of commercial notebook computers and desktops.

A fuel cell converts hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process produces electricity. A conventional battery has all of its chemicals stored inside, and it converts those chemicals into electricity, however, a battery eventually "goes dead" and you have to throw it away or recharge it. With a fuel cell, chemicals constantly flow into the cell so it never goes dead, as long as there is a flow of chemicals into the cell, the electricity flows out of the cell.

"Fuel cells, bionanotechnology and micromachines, are the future areas of technology that most companies are researching. NEC spends five per cent of its revenues on R&D alone. We have just introduced a prototype of the fuel cell powered laptop in Japan. We are also looking at breakthroughs in carbon nanotubes, since they will could be used as composites to increase the strength of materials and also help in the drug delivery process for the pharma industry," added Mr Chun.

According to industry experts, early fuel cells are already in the market, but have to overcome energy capacity issues. They predict that fuel cells will rake in $1.6 billion in revenues and hold a market share of 15 per cent by 2010.