Sony And Toshiba To Merge OLED And LCD Businesses
The consolidation process in Japan’s electronics industry continues: Toshiba and Sony are in talks to combine their OLED and small LCD businesses, various Japanese news sources are reporting. The plan is to find synergies in the production for small LCD panels for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in order to catch up with Sharp, which currently holds the biggest share in the world market in this segment.
What’s interesting is that neither one of the companies but a government-backed investment fund will take a major stake in the new entity, which is expected to be established by the end of this year. That fund, Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, will likely control 70-80% of the entity, according to Japanese business daily The Nikkei (the rest will be shared between Sony and Toshiba).
Toshiba Mobile Display and Sony Mobile Display will cease to exist, and the yet to be named entity will compete with Sharp, the Hitachi-Foxconn alliance, and others in the global small LCD panel market.
Another interesting point is that the Sony-Toshiba move is aimed at getting both companies ready for a post-LCD future: the new entity is supposed to streamline all future R&D in OLED technology by the Sony and Toshiba. So far, big S and big T have been developing OLEDs separately, but they are far behind Samsung, the current global leader in that market.
Samsung’s New High-Resolution Screens: Too Good To Be True?
Samsung today revealed a new display which, at 2560×1600 and 10.1″, is far denser than any on the market right now — including the iPhone 4′s famous “Retina” display. But will the non-traditional Pentile method of rendering pixels result in something less than the mega-rez screen we’re hoping for?
After all, Samsung abandoned the Pentile display found in Galaxy S phones, a display I personally found problematic, noting the jagged edges and visible pixels in my review. But at an effective 300 pixels per inch, will those artifacts even be visible? Samsung seems confident, also touting the lower power requirements and higher brightness levels.
Whether the screen is better or not can really only be determined in person, though — and they’re going to be on display next week in LA. We’ll have more on the topic then, but for now let’s just cross our fingers. If it works, it could be the makings of that Retina iPad we heard rumors of — or else Samsung could just keep it for itself.
More information and a “comparison” tool (that really doesn’t do Pentile any favors) can be found here.
Toshiba Decides To Give Up OLED Production
Just when everyone thought OLED screens would constitute the third of innovation for flat panel TVs (following LED backlit TVs and 3D capability), Toshiba just made a surprise decision. According to Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Toshiba has entirely given up previous plans to mass-produce OLED screens.
Toshiba’s subsidiary, Toshiba Mobile Display Corp., together with Panasonic, has invested $190 million in 2008 to set up an OLED production line at a factory in Ishikawa prefecture. The plan was to produce 1.5 million OLED screens for smartphones per year. But that won’t happen (on the picture, you can see a bigger OLED Toshiba showed two years ago).
Toshiba says its decision to scrap OLED was triggered by a surge in demand for LCD this year. Apparently, another important factor was the blow the recent financial crisis dealt to the earnings of the company.
All staff involved in the production and R&D of OLED will be transferred to the LCD panel division. The company will now focus on doing OLED-related R&D for lighting equipment only.
Apple Releases Fix for 27-Inch iMac Display Problems
Apple has issued a firmware update to address display issues affecting many brand new 27-inch iMacs.
The update, labeled 27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0, is 683KB large and requires Mac OS X 10.6.2. Installation instructions are available at Apple’s website.
Customers complained in support forums about display and performance issues with the 27-inch iMac shortly after its Oct. 20 release.
Via MacRumors
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Image courtesy of Apple
Gestural Computing Is The New Multitouch
By Evan Ackerman
Remember back when the display in Minority Report was the future technology that everyone was talking about? Well, now it’s the past, ’cause MIT’s Media Lab has come up with a display that can potentially do all that fancy gestural stuff, except without the gloves.
Called BiDi (for Bi-Directional), the display works on a very basic level a little bit like a Microsoft Surface table: there’s a screen, and behind that, there are cameras (of a sort) to watch what’s going on at the screen. And also like Surface, because cameras are in use as opposed to just a touch panel, the display is sensitive to actions that don’t directly contact it. Where the MIT display really takes the cake, though, is that it uses a field of optical sensors embedded in the display combined with some fancy image processing to make a detailed three dimensional map of exactly how far things are from the display, which not only allows you to make recognizable gestures much farther from the surface, but also allows you to gesture in and out. The LCD alternates back and forth very quickly between displaying and image and capturing data (sort of like Microsoft’s SecondLight Surface mod), and it does it so quickly that all you see is the image itself.
MIT says that they’re trying to steer away from novelty applications a bit, which is sad, but they hope to “inspire” LCD manufacturers to start working on this stuff. So, you know who you are: GET INSPIRED. I want one of these.
