This week IDTechEx is at the annual S.I.D. (Society for Information Displays) event in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Over the coming days we will provide coverage in Printed Electronics World of the latest developments announced at the event.
The event, smaller than last year, had the usual extensive range of technical presentations, but overall there were less new major developments compared to previous years. The hottest aspects of the event were:
- E-paper displays. 20 e-readers are now available and more on the way - including flexible versions. PVI announced its $215 million acquisition of E ink, covered in Printed Electronics World on Monday. We will shortly be publishing a full interview with PVI and E ink.
- Touch screen technologies, now in high demand following the success of Apple's iPhone
- Flexible displays - including LCDs and suitable backplane technology
IDTechEx noted that OLEDs were featured much less on exhibitors stands than in previous years, with the major East Asian display companies giving more space to LCD developments such as 240Hz LCDs, touch screen LCDs, privacy view control LCDs etc.
Samsung show many World firsts
Samsung showed many new World first concepts on their stand, including:
- A printed oxide TFT array for an LCD display. The display was 4 inches, 100 pixels per inch (ppi) and the mobility achieved was 0.6 cm2/Vs.
- An active matrix OLED (AMOLED) embedded into a flexible smart card, powered by a radio frequency interface, as shown below.
- A 12.1" transparent AMOLED display, exhibiting 30% transmittance
- The Worlds thinnest OLED at 50 microns for the complete stack
Plastic Logic Keynote, E-Reader to launch at CES in 2010
Martin Jackson, VP of Technology at Plastic Logic, was one of the keynote speakers. He stated that industry research claims that newspaper quarterly print sales are currently declining a rate of 16%. Advertisement revenue is dropping as more people get news from the internet, and use free online advertisement sites such as Craigs list. Conversely, another study found that the global digital publishing revenue, for e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, is increasing rapidly, from $15 million in Q4 2008 to $25 million in Q1 2009. The much cited Plastic Logic e-reader is in trials in 2009 and will be launched at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in 2010. It will have wireless connectivity and a full screen capacitive touch panel. The screen resolution is 150 ppi, with 8 gray levels. Manufacture processes used are under 100 Deg Celsius. Key to its success it offering a significant content platform and Jackson said that this was a significant focus of the company this year. Partners already include the Financial Times and USA Today.
eMagin turns profitable
eMagin, a provider of micro OLED displays, announced at the investors forum that it has recently turned profitable after a management restructuring. Their displays are used in military applications, such as view finders. They operate from -45 to + 70 degrees Celsius, with a 96000:1 contrast ration, thanks to the White OLED used, with colour filters. Revenues exceeded $5 million in the last quarter with just under $400,000 net income. You can track eMagin's stock price on the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Stock Tracking index.
More developments will be covered over the coming days.
