Good, time-sensitive stories are piling up on me, and next week I hope to share something interesting from LatinDisplay in Campinas, Brazil. So, today I will cram three stories into one Display Daily, with apologies for omitting some of the interesting details.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Story One. On October 27, Kent Displays Incorporated (KDI) dedicated its new hundred-foot-long, roll-to-roll, web-process manufacturing line for making polymer-based cholesteric LCD displays. Roll-to-roll manufacturing is a Holy Grail in the display industry, but only electrophoretic and (now) ChLCD technologies have been shown to be amenable to this potentially cost-saving approach - at least so far.

But there’s a second part to the story. This line was not been built in Taoyuan, Daegu, or Shenzhen. It was built in Kent, Ohio. The line is completely automated, said KDI’s Al Davis, so labor cost was not a consideration, and it’s clearly attractive to have a new line close to the company’s technical staff in Kent. "Of course, additional lines could be built closer to Asian customers in the future if demand warrants," said Davis (optimistically).

After process-step development, limited production on the line will begin in Q1′09, and will scale up in Q2 and Q3. Capacity, said Davis, will be in the millions of displays by Q3′09. The line is capable of three-layer structures for color displays and single-layer for monochrome.

Two new products that will be made on the new line are the display for the eTablet, a very inexpensive ($10-$20) electronic ink note-taker that only uses power when being erased, and eGo displays, color displays that can be embedded in the plastic housings of products so their color can be changed at will. Davis mentioned a couple of possibilities, such as having your cell phone change color depending on who is calling you, or having your iPod match your shirt (or blouse, as the case may be). The eTablet will be available to system makers and consumers (through major office supply retailers) in March 2009. The next products will be small displays for smart cards.

KDI intends to maintain its production line for making ChLCDs on glass substrates, but the company expects most of its output to be on polymer in the future.

Story Two. At Flat Panel Display International I came across a very-low-power LCD technology in the Sharp booth. Sharp was not saying much about the technology, but called it a "memory LCD," inspiring me to speculate in last Thursday’s Display Daily that perhaps the technology was TN-LCD with embedded memory at each pixel location.

Sources have now told me that the "memory LCD" is indeed a version of ChLCD, with the "memory" not being any kind of semiconductor, but the ChLCDs inherent image retention. Sharp reportedly has an existing customer for shelf-edge labels in Japan, but it’s not clear if the company intends to extend the business. Sharp has reportedly made efforts to circumvent KDI’s very strong patent portfolio, but it’s not clear to what extent it has succeeded.

Story Three. Samsung Electronics announced its 70-inch, 2000-nit digital information display (DID) at the CES Press Preview I attended in New York on Tuesday. The display, which was also shown at Flat Panel Display International, uses an LED backlight and local area dimming that produces a claimed dynamic contrast ratio of up to 200,000:1. Earlier in the day, CES named the display an Innovation Award honoree.

Scott Birnbaum, Samsung Electronics’ VP for the LCD Business in the Americas Region, said the display was developed with strong input from customers, and is intended to make LCD signage attractive for sunlit outdoor applications for the first time. LEDs have dominated the outdoor electronic signage market until now, and the 2000 nit luminance matches that of a recently announced LED signage product, so watch out LEDs.

On the other hand, the high output from the backlight makes it necessary to use heat blockers to protect the LCD. Samsung has done this and taken other steps to make the display reliable 24/7 in outdoor use, Birnbaum said.

The 70-inch will begin sampling before year’s end. Expect a substantial roll-out in 2009.

Next week: LatinDisplay 2008.