Information Display February March 2012
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TABLETS, eREADERS, AND MUCH MORE February/March 2012 Official Monthly Publication of the Society for Information Display • www.informationdisplay.org Vol. 28, Nos. 2 & 3 SMALL & MEDIUM DISPLAYS CHECKED IN ONE SHOT ON AXIS MEASUREMENT FOR ALL POINTS NORMAL INCIDENCE ULTRA-HIGH RESOLUTION HIGH ACCURACY COLOR, LUMINANCE, POLARIZATION, RADIANCE FIXED MEASUREMENT DISTANCE ELDIM INTRODUCES A SERIES OF DOUBLE TELECENTRIC OBJECTIVES WITH VARIOUS SIZES. IT ALLOWS NORMAL INCIDENCE ANALYSIS OF SMALL & MEDIUM DISPLAY WITH UNPRECEDENTED ACCURACY. LUMINANCE, COLOR, POLARIZATION AND RADIANCE CAN BE MEASURED WITH THE NEW GENERATION OF UMASTER INSTRUMENTS. Phone: +33 2 31 947 600 s e-mail: [email protected] s Web: www.eldim.fr SID Information SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION DISPLAY FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012 ON THE COVER: Tablets and eReaders place VOL. 28, NOS. 2 & 3 display engineers in paradoxical situations that are full DISPLAY of trade-offs. They are, therefore, platforms for the introduction of new display technologies. This extremely rich area of display development will be relevant – and controversial – for a long time to come. One can easily argue that this sector of displays has the largest number contents of distinct technologies pitted against each other. How long will it last? Maybe until that ultimate full-color, video-rate, readable in all-lighting conditions, unbreak- 2 Editorial able, foldable, and energy-saving touch-driven display The Progress of Portable Displays is developed. In the meantime, a few technologies have been carefully matched to the right applications, By Stephen P. Atwood enabling early entry even without perfect screen perfor- 3 Industry News mance. An example of this is E Ink’s electrophorectic display made in a roll-to-roll processing plant in By Jenny Donelan Massachusetts. In the photo, the latest gereration of Guest Editorial E Ink’s display film is unrolled alongside the Charles 4 River near Boston. Tablets and eReaders: Fertile Ground for Display Innovations By Jason Heikenfeld 6 Frontline Technology: The Future of Displays Is Foldable Growth in mobile data consumption has pushed mobile-display sizes beyond 4 in., creating a potential market for foldable displays that enable further enlargement of the display without increasing the mobile- device size and weight. The applications, alternatives, and status of the technology for foldable displays will be discussed. By Edzer Huitema 12 Display Marketplace: Tablets Impact the Notebook Market: Enter the Ultrabook The tablet PC, in its short lifetime, has already influenced the mobile PC market in numerous ways, but none more concretely than in inspiring the emergence of the Ultrabook. By Richard Shim 16 Show Review: CES 2012 Display Highlights Displays large and small played a dominant role in the products exhibited at the most recent Consumer Photo Credit: Gary Sloan Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Cover Design: Acapella Studios, Inc. By Steve Sechrist 26 Enabling Technology: Dual-Pigment Electrophorectic Displays for Reading Next Month in Textbooks Information Display In recent years, electronic paper has been hugely successful in augmenting traditional paper in the area of “leisure reading.” Now its developers are aiming at academic textbooks. SID 2012 Preview / Backlights By Sriram Peruvemba Syposium Preview 30 Frontline Technology: Touch Technology for eReaders Honors and Awards Four touch technologies are currently used in eReaders: analog resistive, electromagnetic pen digitizer, LED and Backlighting Forecast scanned infrared, and projected capacitive. None of these meet 100% of the user and system requirements for optimum touch in eReaders. Evolving LED-Based Edge-Lit Light Guides By Geoff Walker Monolithic Segmented Light Guides 32 Frontline Technology: Toward the Ultimate 3-D Display Part II of America Invents Overview Holographic stereography and a new photorefractive material may help create a 3-D display that reproduces all human visual cues. INFORMATION DISPLAY (ISSN 0362-0972) is published 10 times By Pierre-Alexandre Blanche a year for the Society for Information Display by Palisades Convention Management, 411 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10003; William Klein, President and CEO. EDITORIAL AND 38 Patent Legislation: Part I: What Companies Need to Know about the BUSINESS OFFICES: Jay Morreale, Editor-in-Chief, Palisades Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) Patent Reform Legislation Convention Management, 411 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10003; telephone 212/460-9700. Send manuscripts to the The America Invents Act, the most significant change to the U.S. patent system since 1952, was signed into attention of the Editor, ID. SID HEADQUARTERS, for corres- law on September 16, 2011. This series of articles will focus on selected provisions of the AIA that are like- pondence on subscriptions and membership: Society for Information Display, 1475 S. Bascom Ave., Ste. 114, Campbell, CA 95008; ly to be the most relevant to companies in the display industry. Part I of this series of articles will focus telephone 408/879-3901, fax -3833. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Information mainly on key litigation-related provisions that are effective now. Display is distributed without charge to those qualified and to SID members as a benefit of membership (annual dues $100.00). By Clark A. Jablon Subscriptions to others: U.S. & Canada: $75.00 one year, $7.50 single copy; elsewhere: $100.00 one year, $7.50 single copy. PRINTED by 41 Journal of the SID February and March Contents Sheridan Printing Company, Alpha, NJ 08865. Third-class postage paid at Lehigh Valley, PA. PERMISSIONS: Abstracting is permitted 42 SID News with credit to the source. Libraries are permitted to photocopy beyond the limits of the U.S. copyright law for private use of patrons, SID Debuts Innovation Zone for Cutting-Edge Display Technologies providing a fee of $2.00 per article is paid to the Copyright Clearance Center, 21 Congress Street, Salem, MA 01970 (reference serial code 46 Display Week 2012 Housing Registration Form 0362-0972/12/$1.00 + $0.00). Instructors are permitted to photocopy isolated articles for noncommercial classroom use without fee. This 48 Sustaining Members permission does not apply to any special reports or lists published in this magazine. For other copying, reprint or republication permission, Index to Advertisers write to Society for Information Display, 1475 S. Bascom Ave., Ste. 48 114, Campbell, CA 95008. Copyright © 2012 Society for Information For Industry News, New Products, Current and Forthcoming Articles, see www.informationdisplay.org Display. All rights reserved. Information Display 2&3/12 1 Information editorial DISPLAY The Progress of Portable Displays Executive Editor: Stephen P. Atwood 617/306-9729, [email protected] by Stephen Atwood Editor-in-Chief: Jay Morreale This month, we take a look at the topic of tablets, ranging 212/460-9700, [email protected] from eReaders to holographic displays, but I want to start Managing Editor: Jenny Donelan with some observations on the topics of tablets, eReaders, 603/924-9628, [email protected] and other portable displays. We asked guest editor Jason Heikenfeld, Associate Professor & Director for the Novel Sales Manager: Christine von Steiger 413/783-0473, [email protected] Devices Laboratory at the School of Electronic and Com- puting Systems at the University of Cincinnati, to help us understand the latest product trends, as well as how the new devices would be used, and what the future looked like for these types of products. Jason assembled a nice Editorial Advisory Board lineup of perspectives we are pleased to feature this month. Stephen P. Atwood, Chair It is easy to be optimistic about this segment of the industry when you see the signif- Crane/Azonix Corp., U.S.A. icant adoption of eReaders, tablets, smartphones, and other similar devices appearing Helge Seetzen everywhere. I am on an airplane as I write this, and everyone around me is peering TandemLaunch Technologies, Westmont, into their tablet, smartphone, or eReader. I feel out of date with my traditional laptop Quebec, Canada computer and 15-in. screen as I click away on an almost full-sized keyboard, counting Allan Kmetz the precious minutes until that dreaded pop-up flag alerts me to an empty battery. Consultant, U.S.A. (I might also acknowledge that I feel pretty cramped too and will soon shut this down Larry Weber and grab my Kindle.) My fellow travelers are enjoying state-of-the-art touch screens Consultant, U.S.A. and almost unending battery life with much more space on their tray tables. There has clearly been a revolution in personal-computing technology. However, as much as it seems that the frontier of personal-computing devices has Guest Editors been conquered, some functionality still appears to be missing. For example, all of the Materials devices I can buy today use fixed, flat, rigid displays. The display dictates the physical Ion Bita, Qualcomm MEMS outline of the device and displays larger than about 5 in. on the diagonal relegate the Technologies device to a bag or purse for transport. eReaders and Tablets The entire time I have been working with ID magazine, we have been publishing Jason Heikenfeld, University of articles on flexible displays and trying to keep a balanced view between the hype of Cincinnati “just around the corner” and the pessimism of “that will never happen.” We have Backlighting/LEDs published numerous articles on the underlying technologies for flexible displays, Adi Abileah, Planar Systems carried various accounts about the supply chain and manufacturing technologies Interacting with Displays required, talked at length about the uncountable advantages of a display that can bend Geoff Walker, IMS Research or fold, and in some cases noted the loss of early-entry developers who tried and failed TV Technology to achieve the goal. Most of these perspectives have been positive, but none have David Trczinski, Avid demonstrated the proof that rollable or foldable displays are soon to be in our hands in any mass-market application.