Competing technologies - Page 39

LG Display reported heavy losses, as the company sees continued weak demand from TV makers. Interestingly, BNP Paribas bank estimates that the LCD TV industry has peaked - and will shrink by 3-4 percent a year. This is due to new displays such as AMOLEDs.

This seems a bit optimistic - as in all probability it will take at least 2-3 years for OLED TVs to really start to gain market in share.

Plastic Logic announced a major investment from Russia's RUSNANO. The $700 million (!) investment will be used to build a mass-production factory for thin, light and flexible plastic-based e-paper displays. Those displays will be used in Plastic Logic’s first commercial consumer electronics product, a next-generation electronic reader for business that is currently under development.

The new factory will be built in Zelenograd, Russia, and is scheduled to begin production in 2013/2014 - and will be able to produce hundreds of thousands displays monthly. This will be Plastic Logic's second factory (the first one was opened in 2008 in Dresden, Germany). Russia hopes that this move will establish a commercial plastic electronics industry.

SonyEricsson just announced a new smartphone called Xperia Arc, and it uses a new kind of LCD display that SonyEricsson calls Reality Display. It's a 4.2" TFT-LCD with 854x480 resolution, and SonyEricsson says that it provides a brighter and clearer image compared to other LCDs - thanks to the new "Mobile Bravia Engine" technology.

A few weeks ago LG showed a new bright display and a new flagship phone codenamed "B". Now they have officially announced this new display called NOVA (which is based on LCD technology). LG claims that NOVA displays are extremely bright (700 nits) but also very efficient - even more so than OLEDs. In fact LG says that an AMOLED will consume twice as much power to display a full white screen (but we already know that AMOLEDs are less efficient than even regular LCDs on white screens). NOVA displays are also highly readable under direct sunlight.

LG also announced the Optimus Black Android (v2.2) phone which has a 4" NOVA display and will ship sometimes during the first half of 2011. LG says that the Optimus Black will be the world's slimmest smart phone (at 9.2mm).

Samsung Mobile Display announced that the International Committee for Display Metrology (ICDM) approved their Emotional Image Quality Evaluation (EIQE) standard. The new standard improves on the National Television System Committee (NTSC)’s standard which simply measures the RGB colors in a flat space. The new standard calls for measuring all colors reproduced by the display and taking into account external factors such as lighting.

The EIQI is based on the Volume Color Reproduction Capability (VCRC) which considers colors in a three-dimensional space. It is also based on human perception by using the Perceptual Contrast Length (PCL) standard that expresses perceived degree of lightness. If you measure AMOLED displays in the NTSC standard, it turns out that it is less bright than LCDs. But using the new standard, they are brighter, and the resolution is perceived to be better.

Update: LG has officially announced the Optimus Black, and the display is called NOVA. More information here!

LG is teasing us with a new Android phone, codenamed 'B', that they promise to preview at CES 2011 next month. The most striking feature of this new phone is a super-bright display - that offers 700 nits of brightness, which is 40% more than the Super-AMOLED on the Galaxy S. You can see it side-by-side with the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S:

We don't know whether that's a new kind of LCD or an AMOLED yet... we'll have to wait till CES.

A few days ago we reported that Toshiba Mobile Display plans to invest around $1.2 billion in a new LCD factory that will make small-sized LTPS LCD displays, and Apple will be the client (and will also invest in the new plant). Today we hear pretty much the same story about Sharp - another $1.2 billion LCD plant, and Apple is the client and investor again.

The new plant is actually an expansion of Sharp's existing factory in kameyama. And the Apple bit isn't official yet (the same as was the Toshiba story - which actually denied the fact any connection to Apple).

Update: Toshiba denies the rumors about Apple's investment in the new plant

Toshiba Mobile Display plans to invest around $1.2 billion in a new LCD factory that will make small-sized LTPS LCD displays. Apple will invest some of the money too - this factory will mostly make "Retina" displays for iPhones. The production will start on the 2nd half of 2011.

Apple IPS-LCD vs Super-AMOLED

This is interesting, and probably means that Apple isn't looking to use OLED displays in their products any time soon. I guess earlier rumors of Apple buying all of Samsung's Super-AMOLED capacity for 2011 isn't true...

Google announced that the Nexus S will be available in Russia in February 2011 - but with an LCD (super-clear LCD) instead of a Super-AMOLED. It's likely that they are doing this because of the shortage in AMOLED displays. Google will probably use Super-AMOLED in some countries (like the US) and LCD in others.

Both displays offer pretty much the same performance, but it seems that Super-AMOLED is still the display of choice for Samsung.

QD Vision and LG display announced a joint-development agreement - to create highly-efficient, high-performance active matrix displays based on electroluminescent quantum dot LED (QLEDs). According to QD Vision, such displays will use less power than other technologies (including OLEDs) and have brighter and richer colors. They will also be cheaper to produce.

QD Vision says that QLEDs have several advantages: pure color, low-power consumption, low-cost manufacturing and are ultrathin, transparent and flexible. Back in 2009 we posted an interview with QD-Vision's founder and CTO, explaining their technology and how it applies to displays and lighting.