VolumeVolume 21 22 No No 2 12 January March 20th 20th 2014 2015 Disappointing Q4 Puts Contents Brakes on IDC’s Tablet

Detailed Contents 2 Forecast IDC has cut back its five-year forecast for so far, Windows is expected to gain signifi- Company News 3 worldwide tablet shipments, following a YoY cant share over the coming years - growing decline in Q4’14. The firm expects 234.5 from 5.1% in 2015 to 14.1% in 2019. Market News 4 million units to be shipped this year, repre- Jean Philippe Bouchard, IDC’s research di- In Brief 23 senting a moderate increase of 2.1%. Al- rector for tablets, said, “Microsoft is doing a though predictions have been cut, IDC still lot of good things right now and we believe Product News 28 expects positive - if low - growth from the the launch of Windows 10 later this year will tablet market in the coming years; primarily not only have a significant impact on Rear Panel 30 due to increasing demand in the commer- Microsoft’s share of the market, but on the cial sector, as Microsoft rises. industry as a whole...There is an appetite for Android will remain the market leader in a platform that can provide a productivity operating system terms, with almost 66% experience that remains consistent across of the market to 2019. iOS is ‘likely the weak- multiple form factors and device types, and est link’; IDC predicts that the OS’s volume we believe Microsoft is well positioned to share will fall this year, to levels below those capture some of that demand”. seen since 2012. Despite modest adoption

Worldwide Tablet and Convertible Shipments' Market Share and YoY Growth by Operating System, 2014 – 2019 (Shipments in Millions) Operating 2015 Units 2019 Units 2014 Market 2015 Market 2019 Market 2014 Units System (F) (F) Share (%) Share (%) (F) Share (%) (F) Android 154.7 158.1 169.5 67.3 67.4 62.9 ISSN 2057-5971 iOS 63.4 60.1 61.9 27.6 25.6 23 is published 48 times a year and copyright Windows 11.6 16.3 38 5.1 7 14.1 Meko Ltd. Total 229.7 234.5 269.4 100 100 100 134 Upper Chobham Road Source: IDC Camberley Surrey GU15 1EJ Worldwide Tablet and Convertible UK 300 Shipment Forecast 60 Tel: +44 (0)1252 835385 Source: IDC Follow us @Display_Daily 250 50

Send any news to: [email protected] 200 40 Growth (%)YoY

Managing Editor Bob Raikes 150 30 Business Ediitor News Editor Helen Vince Tom Allen Contributing Editors 100 20 Arthur Berman Steve Sechrist (Millions) Shipments Matthew Brennesholtz Len Scrogan Vanessa Browning Ken Werner Chris Chinnock David Barnes 50 10 Norbert Hildebrand Phil Wright 0 0 Subscription rates available on request. 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

www.meko.co.uk Contents

Contents Disappointing Q4 Puts Brakes on IDC’s Tablet Editor’s comment Forecast...... 1 Company News, Finance Results 3 Steve mentions in his report in this issue that the interest at DSE from Google might be related to the idea that Digital Sony Starts Job Cuts in Sweden ...... 3 Signage might just become part of the “Internet of Things” Panasonic to Establish Procurement Unit ...... 3 (IOT). I can see what he means and we have been reporting on developments that Microsoft Files Lawsuit Against Kyocera ...... 3 might suggest this. Intel Cuts Revenue Forecast ...... 3 It seems to me that one of the key concepts that is central to this is the idea of TCL to Build Plants in India, Brazil ...... 3 “Display as a Service”. I was reminded of this technology earlier this week as I was Sharp Rebuts Latest Rumours...... 3 at CeBIT and spoke to the University of Saarland, which has been working with Intel on this concept. DaaS was launched at the Hannover show in 2013, al- Market News 4 though there was no news on the idea at this year’s CeBIT. In fact, the last entry SID Display Week iZone Extends Deadline ...... 4 to the DaaS blog was from CeBIT 2013. SuperMHL Silicon Announced ...... 5 The idea of DaaS is that applications can send pixels to displays without worrying Slight Increase in Long-Term PC Forecast, Says IDC ...... 6 if there is a directly connected display and without worrying about the detailed HSA Finalises 1.0 Specification for Power-Efficient Computing specification of the final display device. The display image is created on the source ...... 7 device, then compressed and transmitted over a network to the final display, Editorial (Continued) ...... 7 where it may be combined with other images and where the limits and features of Pascal is Nvidia’s Newest, Fastest GPU Architecture ...... 8 the final display device are taken into account (borders, bezels, aspect ratios, Silver Nanowires Approach $500 Million Value ...... 8 whether it’s a video wall etc) and the final image rendered. Equally, the display Gartner Predicts Strong Growth for Head Mounted Displays device can look around for content from “pixel providers” and blend those into an ...... 9 image for display. You can easily see how those approaches might be attractive to makers of “headless” IoT devices which could look around for a display to show Competition Shifts Tablet Share Away From Dominant Brands their data...... 9 The End of an Era (Final Chapter) ...... 19

Atheer Labs has Unique IP to help Augmented Reality Adoption ...... 20

Smartwatches - The Future of Wearables? ...... 21

One Connector to Rule Them All...... 22

Event Report - CeBIT 2015 10

In Brief 23

Product News 28 This kind of “display virtualisation” is a very powerful concept. It’s basically the Impression Pi Boasts Control Through Computer Vision 28 same kind of approach that has seen the development of the idea of the “Virtual Toshiba Produces Tiny Convertible PC ...... 28 STB” by Active Video Networks that we have been writing about since 2010 and Sharp’s POS System Uses Dual Flush Displays ...... 28 which is gradually getting into the TV market. It’s also behind the remote provision Asus’ UltraHD Notebook Runs for Six Hours ...... 29 of workstation performance by RealVNC and AMD that we report on from CeBIT. Product Roundup ...... 29 Nvidia has also shown impressive game play over the internet to us in the past, and I have raved over several years about the “Project Fresco” research project that REAR PANEL 30 NDS started developing before it was acquired by Cisco and which won prizes for Cisco in 2013. Matt wrote about technology from Userful that uses some of the same concepts in the same space in his Display Daily article in December. So, we have Intel, Cisco and Google working away on this, among many others including high tech start-ups in software and networking - there’s a lot of activity.

Continued on page 9

20 March 2015 2 Mobile Display Monitor Company News, Finance Results

able on fair, reasonable and non-discrimina- Sony Starts Job Cuts in tory terms” and has agreed patent licensing Sharp Rebuts Latest deals with a number of Android handset Sweden manufacturers, including Samsung, LG and Rumours Sony is reported to have started making HTC. Sharp has issued a further denial to reports the first round of job cuts in its mobile busi- Reuters quoted a Microsoft spokesman in Nikkei this week that it is planning job cuts, ness, with news that 1,000 jobs are to go in as saying, “We respect Kyocera but we be- capital enforcement and a revised earnings Sweden. lieve they need to license the patented tech- forecast. The company is understood to have told nology they are using. We’re hopeful this Nikkei had claimed that Sharp was seek- staff in Lund that it will almost halve the case can be resolved amicably”. ing a ¥200 billion ($1.6 billion) capital injec- workforce there from 1st April when Sony tion from its main banks, Mizuho Bank and begins making structural changes to its busi- Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, which was ness. Intel Cuts Revenue Forecast ¥50 billion ($410 million) more than its initial Last month Sony narrowed its annual net request. The report also said that Sharp was Intel has cut its first quarter turnover fore- loss forecast to ¥170 billion ($1.4 billion), planning to cut more than 10% of its Japa- cast by almost a billion dollars, saying it now having previously said it expected to record nese workforce, equating to around 3,000 expects turnover to be around $12.8 billion a net loss of ¥230 billion ($1.9 billion) (Sony jobs, through voluntary early retirement. having previously forecast $13.7 billion. Cuts Loss Forecast but Also Cuts More Jobs). Sharp said: “Under the current severe busi- The change in outlook is a result of weaker At the same time Sony announced a further ness environment, Sharp is considering vari- than expected demand for business desk- round of job cuts in its mobile business. The ous options to reduce overall fixed costs, but top PCs and lower than expected inventory business has now seen its workforce re- no specific decisions are made apart from levels across the PC supply chain. Intel said it duced by one third. the voluntary salary cut of directors and ex- believes the changes to demand and inven- ecutive officers which was announced ear- tory patterns are caused by lower than ex- lier”, and reiterated that an announcement pected Windows XP refresh in small and would be made in May 2015. Panasonic to Establish medium business and increasingly challeng- Procurement Unit ing macroeconomic and currency conditions, particularly in Europe. Panasonic is to set up a dedicated unit for procuring common parts and materials, in a bid to improve competitiveness and lower TCL to Build Plants in India, costs. Computacenter plc has released its 2014 The company’s annual procurement bill is Brazil results, reporting a net profit of £55.1 million around $32.6 billion, covering all of TCL Corp. says it is planning to start build- ($81.3 million) for the year on turnover of Panasonic’s business segments and reports ing factories in India and Brazil next year to £3.1 billion ($4.5 billion), which compares suggest that the new unit would be respon- manufacture smartphones and wearable with a net profit a year earlier of £33.1 million sible for around half of that amount. devices. According to reports, the company ($48.8 million) on turnover of £3 billion ($4.4 wants to establish manufacturing bases in billion). Total turnover in Germany declined these two countries to meet the needs of 8.2% to £1.1 billion ($1.6 billion), while the Microsoft Files Lawsuit their rapidly expanding consumer electron- UK reported strong revenue growth of Against Kyocera ics markets. By setting up plants close to the 10.2% to £1.4 billion ($2 billion). end market, TCL is aiming to overcome high Emagin Corporation has released its Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against Kyocera import tariffs. fourth quarter and full year results, posting a alleging that three of the Japanese compa- Last week, TCL reported a 60% jump in net loss of $1.5 million on turnover of $6.7 ny’s phones infringed seven Microsoft pat- net profit for the year to $518 million and an million in Q4, which compares with a net ents. According to a Reuters report, Microsoft 18.4% increase in turnover to $14.4 billion, loss of $8.7 million on turnover of $6.1 mil- has asked a federal judge in Seattle to im- largely driven by a 60.3% growth in sales at Display Monitor lion in the final quarter of last year. For the pose a US sales injunction against Kyocera’s its handset unit, TCL Communication Tech- year, Emagin’s net profit narrowed to $5.2 alleged infringing products. nology. This year, TCL Communications is million from $14 million in the previous year, Microsoft had previously said that it will targeting 30% revenue growth as part of the while turnover fell to $25.7 million from $28 adhere to the wishes of standards organisa- group’s wider push to transform itself into a million. tions and make its standard patents “avail- manufacturer of connected technologies.

Mobile Display Monitor3 20 March 2015 Finance Results, People News

Sony Corporation recorded a net profit million) on turnover of ¥5.4 trillion ($44.7 bil- of ¥90 billion ($746.3 million) in the third quar- lion), which compares with a net profit for ter of the year on turnover of ¥2.5 trillion ($20.7 the corresponding period of last year of ¥9.8 Midwich Expands Technical billion), which compares with a net profit in billion ($81.3 billion) on turnover of ¥5 trillion Sales Team Q3 of the previous year of ¥26.4 billion ($41.4 billion). ($218.9 million) on turnover of ¥2.4 trillion Hannstar Display has released its fourth Midwich has appointed Steve Goodwin to ($19.9 billion). The 6.5% increase in turnover quarter and full year results, posting a net its technical sales team. Goodwin has worked in Q3 was primarily driven by an increase in loss of NT$659 million ($20.9 million) in Q4, in the past on many higher education pro- unit sales of smartphones and a significant which compares with a net profit in the final curement frameworks with system integra- increase in Sony’s devices segment sales. quarter of the previous year of NT$148 mil- tors, such as Impact Marcom. This was partially offset, however, by de- lion ($4.7 million), on turnover which was flat creases in Sony’s other business units, at NT$6.3 billion ($200.3 million). Hannstar’s mostly related to the company’s exit from net profit for the year was NT$541 million the PC business. Mobile communications ($17.2 million) on turnover of NT$23.7 billion sales increased 28.7% year on year to ¥429 ($753.7 million). billion ($3.5 billion), while sales in the home Hannstar’s small and medium sized panel entertainment and sound business dipped shipments in Q4 reached 110 million units, 2.3% to ¥413.3 billion ($3.4 billion). while shipments of large panels and HannsG For the first nine months of the year, Sony products reached 300,000 units. recorded a net loss of ¥19.2 billion ($159.2 Market News

SID Display Week iZone The deadline for applications to Display ent research labs, that often lack the funds to Week’s innovation Zone (iZone) was ex- show off new prototypes. iZone will also fea- Extends Deadline tended to March 27th. As committee chair ture next generation device development Helgi Seetzen explained, the show’s pro- from established companies looking for feed- ducer, Society for Information Display (SID) is back on non commercial shipping devices. looking to expand the prototype display tech- The iZone was established in 2013 and its nology space to some 35 booths. The group corporate sponsor E-Ink Holdings LLC has is accepting applications on its website and kept up the funding since its charter man- evaluating candidates for suitable prototypes date. Companies wanting to apply for a space that can be demonstrated during the show in the iZone can find all documentation on on a no fee basis. the SID iZone website. The I-Zone offers researchers space to dem- At Display Week 2015, the I-Zone Com- onstrate their prototypes or other hardware mittee will select a winner of the “Best I- demo units for two days free of charge at the Zone Prototype at Display Week 2015” premier display exhibition in North America, award, to be announced on the show floor and gives attendees a chance to view best- during Display Week and in the post Display in-class emerging information display tech- Week issue of Information Display magazine. nologies in a dedicated area on the show Dates were pushed back so filing deadline floor. The committee is actively encouraging is now March 27 and candidates will have participation by small companies, startups, until April 10 to confirm participation. To ap- Our own Matt Brennesholtz seen trying universities, government labs, and independ- ply go to the iZone Application website. a Fraunhofer IPMS bidirectional HMD The I-Zone is one that always gets a lot of attention from press and analysts, so the offer of a free table is a really good one. How often is such an opportunity given for free in the heart of Silicon Valley? (BR)

20 March 2015 4 Mobile Display Monitor Market News

SuperMHL Silicon At CES, the MHL Consortium announced tice for the SiI9779. He said that by 2018 the superMHL specification. This specifica- DisplaySearch predicts that virtually 100% Announced tion, when implemented by CE manufactur- of TVs 55" and larger will be 4k and manufac- ers, will allow 8K 120Hz video to connect turers are looking to the success of 4k as from the source to the display with a single justification to move beyond it to 8k. He said cable. the 8k demonstration at CES on a 110” dis- On March 16th, the other shoe dropped. play had been very well received, both by Lattice Semiconductor, which recently ac- the consumer electronics people who saw quired Silicon Image, the driving force be- it and by the production and post-production hind the original MHL specification, an- people. nounced on March 16th the first superMHL HDMI, the original basis for MHL connec- port processor, the SiI9779. This chip is in- tivity, was originally intended as a consumer tended to be used either in an 8k TV or a interface, just like superMHL. However, HDMI dedicated 8k set top box. When used at the has been widely adopted by professional receiving end of a video stream in a TV, the applications as a single cable, uncompressed SiI9779 can handle one superMHL connec- solution to display connectivity for both 2k/ tor and three HDMI 2.0 connectors. When HDTV and 4k/UHD applications. (I’m writing used as a transmitter in an STB, it can trans- this article on a laptop connected to a moni- mit only the superMHL signal, not HDMI sig- tor via HDMI.) Since superMHL is the only nals. While the superMHL specification al- single-cable solution to 8k video currently lows 8K 120Hz video, the SiI9779 chip can available, even as a specification, Goldberg only handle a maximum of 8k at 60Hz. sees it moving into the professional market as well as the consumer market. According to Goldberg, the superMHL standard is uncompressed at “lower” data rates such as UHD 60Hz. At the extreme data rates superMHL is capable of, such as 8K120 with HDR, visually lossless compres- sion is applied, with compression ratios in the 2x – 3x range (using the VESA DisplayStream standard - Man. Ed.). When used with HDR signals such as Dolby Vision, superMHL transmits metadata to the TV or other display that tells the display exactly what the HDR is, whether it is Dolby Vision or some other HDR technique. It’s then up to the TV electronics to display the video correctly. The superMHL connector is reversible in two senses. First, it is (or at least can be) the same on both ends, unlike, for example, ear- lier versions of USB. Second, each connec- tor is reversible top-to-bottom, so if you are fumbling around behind a display in the dark, you don’t have to worry about reversing the The SiI9779 supports key features such as: connector to plug it in. • 8k60 resolution Goldberg said Lattice Semiconductor will • BT.2020 expanded colour gamut be sampling the SiI9779 in Q2 to TV, display • High Dynamic Range, such as Dolby Vi- and set top box manufacturers. sion 8k content? Goldberg said the first planned • Reversible connector (top-to-bottom, end- 8k availability will be in 2020 when NHK plans to-end) to broadcast the Tokyo Summer Olympics. • Latest audio features including object au- Manufacturers have plenty of time to ramp dio, high resolution and high bit-rate au- up 8k STBs and TVs before then. He added dio such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, 3D au- that there are likely to be professional and dio PC graphics applications for 8k before then. • Audio-only mode - Matthew Brennesholtz I had a chance to talk to Marshall Goldberg of Lattice Semiconductors, formerly of Silicon Image. He is the Sr. Product Manager at Lat-

Mobile Display Monitor 5 20 March 2015 Market News

Slight Increase in Long- PC shipments worldwide will fall by 4.9% areas, but IDC believes that the more posi- YoY in 2015, says IDC, which has revised its tive Q4’14 result was the result of inventory Term PC Forecast, Says previous forecast down from a 3.3% fall. At build-up. It is thought that retailers were IDC the same time, growth predictions for 2016 stocking up on ‘Windows 8.1 Plus Bing’ sys- and 2017 were raised slightly. tems ahead of Microsoft lowering subsidies In Q4’14, PC results were 1.7% ahead of in 2015. IDC’s forecast. Total 2015 volume is ex- A short-term impact of the above is ex- pected to reach 293.1 million units, falling to pected to affect consumer channels, as they 291.4 million by 2019. In value terms, the seek to clear stock. Average prices are likely market was worth $201 billion in 2014 (a to rise in the near future, due to subsidy scale 0.8% fall), and is expected to decline 6.9% backs, the strong US dollar (making systems this year. Small declines in the following years more expensive overseas) and the contin- will bring market value to $175 billion by 2019. ued shift to slim, convertible and touch-based There were real demand improvements PCs. In addition, IDC believes that OEM prod- in the second half of 2014 in some market uct updates and consumer demand will be delayed until the end of 2015, due to the release of Intel’s Skylake platform and PC Shipments by Region and Product Category (Shipments in Microsoft’s Windows 10. Millions) Emerging markets are especially strug- Product gling, ending last year with shipments down Region 2014 (A) 2015 (F) 2016 (F) Category 9.5%. 2015 growth projections are for a 4.7% Emerging Markets Desktop PC 80.4 76.8 75.2 fall. Spending in these regions has been lim- Portable PC 83.2 79.1 83.7 ited by political instability, commodity pric- ing pressures and currency devaluations. Total PC 163.7 156.0 159.0 Additionally there has been competition from Mature Markets Desktop PC 53.4 48.7 45.8 other devices, such as mobiles and Portable PC 91.1 88.4 86.7 wearables. Although emerging regions are Total PC 144.5 137.1 132.5 expected to see positive growth in 2017, Worldwide Desktop PC 133.8 125.5 121.0 shipment estimates will remain below 160 Portable PC 174.3 167.5 170.4 million units through 2019 - down from 163.7 million last year. Total PC 308.1 293.1 291.4 Mature regions are expected to fare bet- Source: IDC ter, having ended 2014 at 8.4% growth - the first positive result since 2010. XP system replacements; slowing tablet demand; and Worldwide PC Forecast by Product Category, aggressive PC pricing supported the result. 2013 - 2016 Despite this, IDC expects shipments to fall 5.1% YoY in 2015, followed by incremental 350 Source: IDC -9.8% -2.2% declines in coming years. IDC has revised its -4.9% -0.7% 300 previous forecast up slightly, and now ex- pects 134 million units to be shipped to 250 mature regions in 2019, up from 130 million. Windows 10, to be introduced later this 200 year, is expected to be well-received and 150 support the Windows ecosystems. It will also provide a better mouse-and-keyboard expe- Shipments (Millions) Shipments 100 rience, relieving some pressure to move to- 50 wards touch, and support non-PC devices like convertibles - likely without significantly 0 boosting total PC shipments. 2013 (A) 2014 (F) 2015 (F) 2016 (F) Loren Loverde, VP of worldwide PC track- Portable PC Desktop PC ers at IDC, said, “The gains in mature regions

20 March 2015 6 Mobile Display Monitor Market News

Slight Increase in Long- for 2014 helped stabilise the market, but any through 2019 from -1.1% to 0.5%. Vendors opportunity for long-term growth depends can focus on growth segments of the PC Term PC Forecast, Says on reviving growth in emerging regions, and market such as AIO, slim and convertible PCs, IDC that seems unlikely with the shift toward or consolidate share, but pressure on pricing mobile devices... Even including 2-in-1 sys- and from competing devices will continue Continued from previous page tems would only boost the compound an- to make it a challenging market”. nual growth rate for total PC shipments

Bob O’Donnell once of IDC but now of TECHnalysis Research is more positive than this and expects just 1% or so drop this year. Other commentators have pointed out that there are two schools of thought on PC forecasts - there are those that see the more negative results as “normal”, while better quarters are the exception, and others who see the positive quarters as “normal”, with the negative ones the real variations! (BR)

HSA Finalises 1.0 The Heterogeneous System Architecture fines how applications interact with HSA plat- (HSA) Foundation has released the HSA 1.0 forms. HSA 1.0 includes several features for Specification for Power- specification, bringing the technology indus- the efficient implementation of languages Efficient Computing try one step closer to true heterogeneous such as C++, Java and Python on heteroge- computing on platforms spanning mobile neous hardware. These enhancements are devices, desktops, high-performance com- intended to make heterogeneous comput- puting (HPC) systems and servers’. ing available to mainstream and mobile ap- HSA is an architecture that integrates the plications. CPU and GPU on the same bus. Both are Mediatek was one of the first companies used for compute tasks, in parallel. The to produce mainstream heterogeneous ap- newly-approved specification includes ele- plications, with SoCs such as the MT6589 ments designed to improve the program- and MT6785. Giri Amarakone of the com- mability of heterogeneous processors, the pany said, “HSA allows us to move to the portability of programming code and next step of heterogeneous computing with interoperability across different vendor de- the ease of conventional programming and vices. They include: superior power efficiency”. The HSA System Architecture Specifica- Tim Leland, VP of product management at tion, which defines how the hardware oper- Qualcomm, noted that the company is de- ates; The HSA Programmers Reference veloping new, low-power, heterogeneous Manual (PRM), which targets the software computing technologies for Qualcomm ecosystem, tool and compiler developers; Hexagon DSP, Adreno GPU and custom CPU The HSA Runtime Specification, which de- micro architectures.

Editorial (Continued) Now, the challenge of display interfaces is always off going from MPEG2 to MPEG4/H.264 to H.265/ the sheer number of bits that needed to be transmit- HEVC. Adding the decompression hardware tends to ted. We see this challenge in our story in this issue on increase the cost of your display “end points”. How- the new HP wireless display dock - the bandwidth ever, in IOT and digital signage applications, unlike needed and that consequent high frequencies of the desktop applications, latency is not a big issue. radio means that ranges are very limited. Given a flat level of display quality delivery, you could To get the bandwidth requirement down needs com- see how quickly improvements in networks, the codecs pression and then you run into two problems. Com- and the chips that run them could be successful. How- press too much and you start to lose data - and the ever, the demands of users of displays go up and up in human visual system is very sensitive to the visual terms of resolutions, colours, refresh rates and dy- artefacts from lossy compression on graphics content namic range, offsetting the gains made elsewhere. (if not so much on video). On that basis, it looks as though it will be a while Compression and de-compression also takes time, before direct display interfaces are just a part of dis- which introduces latency, and the more sophisticated play history! the codec, the more silicon you need. That’s the trade Bob

Mobile Display Monitor 7 20 March 2015 Market News

Pascal is Nvidia’s Nvidia’s GPU technology Conference took which data can be delivered to the GPU. 3D place in the USA recently, with a new flag- memory will increase bandwidth by three Newest, Fastest GPU ship GPU (see Product News) announced as times, with almost three times the frame Architecture well as a brand new architecture. buffer capacity of Maxwell-based GPUs. Pas- Maxwell is Nvidia’s 10th-generation GPU cal-based GPUs will have their memory chips architecture, and will be succeeded by ‘Pas- staked on top of each other and placed adja- cal’ in 2016. According to Nvidia, Pascal is as cent to the GPU, rather than further down much as 10 times faster than Maxwell. the processor boards. Bits will thus need to Pascal’s design was developed thanks to travel a small distance between the two com- Nvidia’s work on deep (aka machine) learn- ponents, accelerating communication and ing. GPUs based on the architecture will have raising power efficiency. three key features: mixed-precision comput- Finally, Nvidia’s NVLink interconnect ena- ing; 3D memory; and NVLink. bles faster data movement: between 5 and 12 times faster, the company says, than PCIe. It also means that the number of GPUs in a system working together in deep learning computations can be doubled. Nvidia has a video about NVLink that can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/q48pn9n. Deep learning is a key part of the automo- tive market. We talked to Nvidia about its move into this space at CES, where it was showing the new Drive PX platform (Nvidia’s Teraflop Chip Enables Self-Aware Cars). Drive PX, which now has a price ($1,000), monitors a car’s surroundings to enable self-driving vehicles. It uses two Tegra X1 processors and can combine data streams from up to 12 cameras. Automotive is the fastest-growing seg- ment of Nvidia’s Tegra business, with higher gross margins than the devices segment. Revenues almost doubled YoY in Q4’14, and Mixed-precision computing enables Pas- more than 7.5 million cars now use Nvidia’s cal-based GPUs to compute at 16-bit floating technology - well up from 4.7 million a year point accuracy; this is of particular benefit to ago. classification and convolution, which are key At the GTC, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted to deep learning. that self-driving cars would become the rule, Memory bandwidth limits the speed at rather than the exception, within 20 years.

Interestingly, Anandtech reports that Nvidia has significant advantages over AMD in the GPU market. The site’s most demanding benchmarks (Crysis 3 at UltraHD in high quality, with FXAA) saw the Titan X beat the R9 290X’s performance by 54%; AMD’s high-end GPUs had their last significant refresh in 2013. For many years, the two company’s have been almost even in performance. (TA)

Silver Nanowires A report by Nanomarkets (http://tinyurl.com/ expected to be worth about $41 million this lsj7kf8) predicts that the market for silver year and $158 million in 2018. Approach $500 Million nanowire-based transparent conductor ma- Other end markets, notably solar photo- Value terials will be worth $485 million by 2022. voltaic and OLED displays, will provide more These materials are currently seeing increas- revenue opportunities throughout the fore- ing adoption in touch sensors. The market is cast period.

20 March 2015 8 Mobile Display Monitor Market News

Gartner Predicts Strong At a press event in Taipei, Gartner research According to this math, a total of 10 million director Brian Blau stated that the total unit head mounted displays have been sold so Growth for Head sales for virtual reality, augmented reality and far and are in the hands of users. This in- Mounted Displays other smart glass apps will grow to 2 million cludes all Google Glass devices as well as units by 2016 and 5 million in 2017 followed the many other devices from Epson, Vuzix by 8 million in 2018. This includes all head and others. Gartner saw an increase in HMD mounted displays. They conclude that by sales in 2014 and believes that this repre- 2018 more than 25 million head mounted sents the strongest sales in this technology displays will have been sold. so far. The analyst sees this development as a move from the fringe of the markets to an Head-Mounted Display Growth, 2016 - 2018 entry into the mainstream consumer mar- ket. Source: Gartner 9 160 The company continued that, before 2014, 8 140 the main application for head mounted dis- plays were specialty applications such as in- 7 120 dustrial design, military training and simula- 6 100 Growth (%) tion. Of course, this changed to a certain de- 5 80 gree when Google Glass entered the mar-

Sales (Millions) Sales 4 ket and pushed for mass market adoption. 60 3 So far this initiative has failed as Google Glass has been discontinued for adoption in the 2 40 general public space. 20 1 Gartner believes that this will change as 0 0 soon as HMD’s are offered as stylish, con- 2016 2017 2018 sumer grade video eyeglasses. In addition, companies such as Sony, Samsung and HTC I have seen and tried many head mounted displays and personally found most of them more of a scientific (there are more offering such devices) need project than a consumer device. First of all the image quality often left much to be desired and secondly the use to provide quality devices together with com- cases were often weak and were met with resistance because of social awkwardness. This is by no means a pelling applications to enhance the user ex- good start for the use of this technology in consumer markets. perience. Gartner sees the style of the device and video use as the keys to consumer adoption. Interestingly it did not mention gaming as a potential driver. Looking at the interest of the media in virtual reality and Oculus Rift in particular, it seems that other players like Facebook and Microsoft have other ideas for this technology. Gaming, video conferencing, social media and other applications seem to be more attractive for these companies. The current market trend seems to favor industrial and military applications. While it is possible that these applications will generate these kind of sales numbers, this still does not mean that the technology is ready for the mass market. Oculus Rift may be released later this year and change all that. So far the only application I have seen working very well was for drawing attention to a booth at MWC. People lined up to watch some content. The interest of people is there (or at least curiosity - Man. Ed.), but there is a long way to go to mass market adoption. - NH

Competition Shifts Apple and Samsung, the tablet market’s The new report from Juniper (http:// leading vendors, will see their market share tinyurl.com/kgq6eoc) predicts that tablets’ Tablet Share Away From fall in the coming years, says Juniper Re- variety and capabilities will expand. Sales will Dominant Brands search. New players introducing low-cost be affected by phablets, and manufacturers models and new form factors will be respon- will need to develop devices suited to differ- sible for the companies’ combined 38% ent segments, rather than products that market by 2019, says the firm. aimed at a very broad audience. Lenovo is chief among the competing Android will remain dominant, although brands. Juniper has forecast that the Chinese Windows devices will represent just under company will ship 30 million tablets, on top 10% of the market by 2019. of what it is already selling, by 2019.

Mobile Display Monitor 9 20 March 2015 Event Report - CeBIT 2015

Many of the halls were very quiet, although and Jack Ma of AliBaba. Ma said that he was the main software halls with Microsoft, SAP at CeBIT for the third time as he had found it and Software Ag were busy and I make no very hard on previous occasions to make an change in my analysis that from an interna- impact in Europe. Looking to the future, he tional hardware show, it has become a Ger- said that the next wave of business is about man software event. Except for the Chinese. building sustainable internet companies. At There was a huge area in Halle 6 that was the moment, internet companies such as taken by the Chinese trade authorities and Google and AliBaba could not, typically, last with attendance from several big vendors more than a few years - they have to be- including BOE, CEC and TCL. However, there come like Mercedes or Siemens. (I wonder were very few visitors on the booths when about this - the point about software is that it we visited, in the middle of the afternoon. is very asset light and becoming more so as We were told by staff from the companies the cloud becomes more important - and that we spoke to that they were there partly that means faster speed and mobility. There’s because China was the special partner com- a symmetry, companies can become global CeBIT is Very Quiet - but pany this year. There were also hundreds of leaders very quickly, but can die just as fast. - small component and accessory companies Man. Ed.) Merkel Promises 50 Mb/s from China, but few talking to anybody when Ma said that B2C has to become C2B, with We have been documenting the decline of we went past. It’s hard to imagine how they businesses doing more to offer customised CeBIT for quite a few years, now (I’ve seen can recover the costs of participation. products. The last industrial revolution was the arc over 30 or more years - Man. Ed.). It The biggest part of our time was in the about replacing muscle power, the next one grew out of the Hannover Fair, which covers Reseller Hall where API ComputerHandel will be based on replacing and enhancing many industries, in the 1980s and was a had a big booth that was being supported by human brains. In the future, he said that huge success in the ’90s. However, many of a number of vendors of displays and graph- “clicks & mortar” is essential. It’s not tech- the top PC hardware brands dropped to low ics products. nology that changes the world, it’s the level of attendance a few years ago and it We managed to get around to see every- dreams that matter. Ma said that his latest entered a period of decline. The show got one that we thought was relevant in a single dream for the future at CeBIT was to help something of a revival when, for a few years, day, including a brief wander around the tech- small companies from Europe to enter the mobile technology really grew, but the mo- nology hall that is always one of the most Chinese market. bile business then established MWC in Bar- interesting parts of the show, if you are a Ma also demonstrated how an app he has celona and abandoned CeBIT as an interna- geek! developed can enable purchase of products tional event (although it’s still important as a On the day before the show started, there from the internet, using face recognition to local mobile event). was a big press event with Chancellor Merkel verify the buyer’s identity. Since then, the show has seen a steady decline, although organisers said that there were around 3,300 exhibiting companies from 70 countries and they claimed that the space taken has risen for the first time since 2001 with a number of companies increas- ing their booth size. The expectation was of 200,000 visitors, a far cry from the 600,000+ in years gone by. It no longer runs over the weekend, so the crowd is more business- oriented. We attended on the first day, so it may be that by the end of the week attendance num- bers will be up, but the first impression was of real quiet. Some of the press facilities were not even opened this time and just before 9:00 am on the first morning, there was only a short queue waiting for entry. I managed to get a seat on the fast train from Hamburg, even though I had no seat reservation. I even got a press locker!

20 March 2015 10 Mobile Display Monitor Event Report - CeBIT 2015

Merkel set out plans to help the develop- ask, you can’t afford it”. The display has 5120 A 4.5" display has 800 x 480 resolution. An- ment of the economy by some clear steps x 2160 format and has lots of input flexibility droid 4.4 - to be upgraded to 5.0 in the future including bringing a 50Mbit/s connection to to allow many configurations. Contrast is - runs on a 1.2GHz quad-core processor with all citizens, with an aim of bringing this by quoted at 4,000:1, brightness at 500 cd/m² 1.5GB of RAM. The phone has 8GB of stor- 2018. Money from the 700MHz spectrum and response time at 8ms. Despite the price, age and a 2,200mAh battery, as well as auction will be spent on improving rural ac- the panel is only rated for 16/7 use. Connec- Samsung’s Knox security system. cess and public Wi-Fi will be expanded. Ger- tivity includes D-Sub, DVI-D, Display Port 1.2 Samsung will release the Xcover 3 in April, many will also try to make it easier for start (2 inputs), Display Port 1.1 (1 input) for €230. up companies to get going as well as work- Most of the smartphone news was at There have also been rumours of a rugged ing with other European countries to develop MWC and there were plenty of people look- feature phone in the Xcover line. The B550 a clear and common network. Merkel also ing at the new Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge at Xcover 3 - according to a leak - will have a 2.4" wants to work on mobile networks to help CeBIT. News at the show was that the new- display with 320 x 240 resolution; a SC7703A to maintain Germany as a centre for the au- est smartphone from Samsung adheres to processor; 128MB of RAM; and 128MB of tomotive industry. At the same time, regula- military ruggedness standards. The Galaxy storage. The same IP67 protection is ex- tions for anonymity of data and net neutrality Xcover 3 complies with the MIL-STD 810G pected to be featured, as well as a 1,300mAh need to be developed. specification; it can survive a 1.2m drop and battery. The phone will be launched in Q2 for is IP67-rated. €85, it is claimed. Samsung Finds Some News at CeBIT Finally, a rugged version of the new Galaxy S6 is also planned, say sources. SamMobile Samsung had a very big booth at CeBIT - says that the phone will have the same 5.1" substantially bigger than last year, and with AMOLED display and octa-core processor, more partners present, it seemed to us, in but will be water- and dust-proof. There will line with the change we noted at ISE this be 16MP and 5MP cameras and 32GB of year. Samsung in Europe is now being led by storage. The phone will also be slightly (2mm) executives with long B2B experience and it thicker, and the battery will be larger is starting to show. After Mobile World and (3,500mAh). ISE, there was only a limited opportunity for new product announcements. There are physical buttons for Home, Back Intel Explains WiDi Pro and Promotes HP The 105" 21:9 ultra wide display was shown and switching apps to windowed mode at ISE and before, but at CeBIT Samsung told (‘Multitasking’), as well as a dedicated ‘Xcover’ Wireless Dock us its name, the QM105D and what it would key. The Xcover button will turn on the torch, We hadn’t expected Intel to provide a CeBIT cost. The list price has been set at €169,000 or activate the camera when double-tapped. highlight, but it turned out that one of the inc VAT, so it’s in the realms of “if you have to most interesting products was shown there. We started on the Intel booth (which was staffed by many of its partners including Fujitsu, HP, Dell and others) by looking at WiDi Pro. First, we wanted to understand how it fits in alongside consumer WiDi and also Miracast. Intel told us that the technology had started as an Intel initiative, but once Miracast had been developed, it seemed sensible to exploit it, so WiDi was re-aligned to exist as an extra layer on top of Miracast for Intel platforms. In the same way, WiDi Pro sits on top of consumer WiDi as an extra layer covering security and session handover. We had a demonstration of WiDi Pro which is about meeting display control. The first machine (which has to include Intel’s VPro chip technology) creates a session by connecting to a WiDi receiver (Intel was us- Samsung’s 105 inch 21:9 LFD looks great, but if you have to ask the price, you ing a device from Actiontec, connected to can’t afford it!

Mobile Display Monitor 11 20 March 2015 Event Report - CeBIT 2015

Intel’s Tri Band Wireless AC 17265 can be fitted in client PCs can be used as the input device for dual desk- top displays. The dock includes dual DisplayPort outputs (to support up to dual FullHD displays using HP’ Wireless dock supports dual displays over WiGig the Intel transmitter), 4 USB 3.0 ports (1 pow- ered), an RJ45 for Ethernet and a VGA port as card (Intel Tri Band Wireless AC with WiGig the display). The session software can iden- well as audio and microphone connectors. Combo card) that includes 60GHz and can tify other devices with Wi-Fi in the room and Range can be an issue for 60GHz technol- replace existing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, can then control which of them has access ogy and HP is quoting 1.2 m as the standard, so it expects quite wide and rapid adoption to the display. A request is sent from the warranted range, although this also requires controlling machine to the new user, who by higher end notebooks. The Elite x2 is a convertible, and the radio “line of sight”. We heard that just putting then confirms that they want to display on card is included in the display/tablet part, so your body between the tablet and the dock the main screen. The display stream then the wireless docking becomes a real benefit could break the connection, but that where switches across. The controlling system can if the device is being used in tablet mode. It there was clear line of sight, in practice, dis- also take back a display connection at any time. There is also a second mode which was described as “peer to peer”, where each user can pass to the next, without a controlling system. If no machines in the meeting have VPro technology, then each can make an in- dividual connection to the WiDi receiver, but no control system can be used. Staff told us that latency could be as low as 30ms or 40ms, although the demonstration system looked to us as though it was a bit slower. However, hand over from one sys- tem to another was fast and smooth. Next we looked at Wireless Docking. It seems that HP has launched its first wire- less docking station which it is calling the “Advanced Wireless Docking Station”. The dock takes advantage of the 802.11ad 60GHz WiGig wireless connection technology to stream display data and networking across to the dock, which was launched recently and costs €199 ($239). At the moment, the only PC that connects is the new HP Elite x2 1011 G1 which in- cludes the required 60GHz technology as an option, but Intel told us that it has a new PCIe

20 March 2015 12 Mobile Display Monitor Event Report - CeBIT 2015 tances of up to 3M were possible. Extending was being shown with some swivel capabil- the UK and the Netherlands as well as the the range would be possible by using higher ity and around 130mm of height adjustment, DACH region of Germany, Austria and Swit- power, but this would compromise battery although the stand design is not yet final. Pric- zerland. The company has inaugurated its own life performance. ing for the 34" version is expected to be €649, cloud centre and has developed a line of PC WiGig uses beam steering to help to with the 29" at €500, although, as with all pric- products for education (MDM Product optimise connectivity and we heard that ing at the moment, final pricing will depend Roundup - Vol 22 No 8) there are a number of factors, including user on currency issues between now and the The company was on a distributor booth movement and changed orientation of the launch. and showed us its new business line design notebook, that cause re-alignment of the Finally, there will be a new 27" UltraHD monitors. There are 24" (2470W) and a 27" beams to be needed. That can have an im- monitor in the UM67 line in June. unit with a “glass design” that minimises the pact on overall data rates. Nevertheless, the borders around the display. The 2470W is a docking station function seems to work well.

LG Hides New Monitors Away

LG had a section of the API booth, but also had a meeting room in the IC building in the middle of the Messe where the desktop monitor business was demonstrating its new range. The team was in positive mood as it has been very successful with selling 21:9 monitors - as we reported in our IFA report, the country is said to have the largest global sales in LG. As a result, the sales team has been feted by the Korean Head Office 23.8" FullHD unit with wide viewing angles and and staff were wearing commemorative a DisplayPort input. The monitor is claimed to pins that had been awarded. Wortmann Is Main “Local Hero” Brand in have an A/R coating which cuts reflections to There is a new B2B series that is being Germany less than 2% and transmissivity is said to be 95%. The panel uses IPS technology, bright- Wortmann is almost the last remaining Ger- ness is 250 cd/m² and DisplayPort and HDMI man “local hero” PC brand with real momen- inputs are featured. Wortmann is selling the tum - it recently announced that it had achieved monitor now, for €260 ex VAT. sales of €1 billion in 2014 from €850 million in The 27" version (2770W) has a 2560 x 1440 2013. Sales are increasing outside Germany and the firm told us that it is selling in France,

known as the MB67 series which is intended to boost LG in the upper ends of the market. An innovation for LG is a presence detector that can detect whether a user is close to the display. There will be a 24" 1920 x 1200 for- mat monitor (this size and resolution remains strongly in demand in Germany) and there will also be a 27" version, although this has just 1920 x 1080 resolution. The mainstream business line is also be- ing updated (to the MB37 range) with an in- crease in the degree of height adjustment that can be achieved. In May, LG will launch a new business line of 21:9 monitors - a pre-production prototype

Mobile Display Monitor 13 20 March 2015 Event Report - CeBIT 2015

panel with an AH IPS panel and a DisplayPort able success with the BL3201PT 32" UltraHD USB ports. Both are based on AHVA (IPS) 1.2 interface along with HDMI, VGA and DVI. monitor which has recently had its list price panels from AUO. Brightness is high at 400 cd/m² and response reduced from €680 to €649. Ordinarily this The SW2401PT is in interesting model. It is quoted at 6ms g/g. would not have been worth remarking, but has a number of special settings so that col- The 2840W “GreenLine” monitor is a several vendors have had two or more price our and brightness adjustments can be stored FullHD touch monitor with a 1.3mp inte- increases in recent months as the Euro has in memory and then recalled using a "puck" grated camera and microphone. There is weakened so any reduction is unusual. switch that normally sits below the display. support for 10 point touch. Panel technology The 23.8" model has 2560 x 1440 resolu- is MVA and brightness is 250 cd/m². Con- tion. nections are through VGA, HDMI & DVI. A new product that was not on the booth For education, as well as PCs, Wortmann will be a 35" 21:9 model with a 2520 x 1080 has developed tablets and convertibles. Al- curved panel. No details or timings are avail- though not fully ruggedised, they are said to able yet. be water resistant. Staff told us that Microsoft In projection, BenQ now claims top sales has a special campaign in German schools. If position in Germany and wants to keep mov- they register directly with Microsoft, they can ing upmarket. The SU917 is a new 1920 x get Windows free (a Google search for 1200 projector for business use and BenQ Microsoft and FWU will give more details). plans a full laser projector later in the year. Microsoft has also had some success with The SU917 has 5,000 ANSI lumens of bright- Multipoint servers being used to drive multi- ness, 7,000:1 contrast and a 1.5:1 zoom lens. ple thin client devices that are used by stu- Audio is supported by a 10W speaker sys- dents on PCs and tablets. BenQ uses this settings "puck" to allow tem. Wortmann has also developed ruggedised quick access to custom display settings Müller told us that the World Cup had defi- tablets for business applications and these nitely boosted projector sales in Germany are generally supplied with Windows, but A new monitor with the same resolution is last summer, but to his surprise, the trend the firm also has two models with Android the BL2711U, which is a 27" model and BenQ had continued and sales were very good in for low end price requests. will also introduce a 24" model, the Q4. BL2420PT. The BL2711U has 300 cd/m² of brightness and 4ms response. Vertical ad- justment is supported (140mm) and there is CeBIT 2015 Round Up a pivot function. Dual 3W speakers support Acer was in the API area with mobile and sound use and there are dual HDMI ports, a monitor products. We have covered the dual link DVI-D and DisplayPort as well as 4 mobile products before, but staff told us that BenQ launched the SU197 projector at there were new monitors. However, when CeBIT we checked our databases, we have reported

This Wortmann rugged tablet is for schools

BenQ Booth Highlights B2B Push

BenQ had a booth with API, but it was one of the biggest and best staffed. We were guided around the booth by industry veteran, Thomas Müller. Part of the booth showed the POS, stretch and LFD displays that the firm had shown at ISE (BenQ Clear in B2B Push). It's still early in this market for BenQ, but we are confident that the focus that the firm has developed in this direction will pay off. Mueller told us that the it has had consider-

20 March 2015 14 Mobile Display Monitor Event Report - CeBIT 2015

LCOS imagers, but more recently just with DLP. It started by selling engines to local brands in China, but is now entering the market under its own brand. Products range from 80 ANSI lumens and upwards to 500 lumens and a unique fea- ture is autofocus. There is an embedded cam- era in the projector that monitors the image during the focusing adjustment and optimises the setting. Projectors also include a full Android implementation (which helps with the camera control) and also a special remote control, based on what the firm calls “G Sensor” technology. Staff were demon- strating the quality of the remote by using it to play Fruit Ninja. Later this year, Butterfly will introduce wire- less streaming to allow mirroring of smartphone and tablet content on the pro- jectors. CEC of China had a booth on the large Acer showed a new consumer id main “partner country” booth and was high- most of them at CES and MWC. The H257U tion”. Standard soda lime glass can be used, lighting its ability to produce open cell pan- is new to us and is a 25" 2560 x 1440 monitor or strengthened or Gorilla Glass and anti-re- els and modules on its G8.5 plant in China. with an IPS panel, 4ms response time and flective and other coatings can be applied As we have reported over the years, CEC got DVI, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort inputs. Bright- according to customer requests. into the business by acquiring the Sharp G6 ness is 350 cd/m2. Butterfly Technology surprised us by Kameyama plant several years ago, and then Asus was also in the API area, but the saying that it has been at many of the shows developed its G8.5 fab, which still has a small products that were new at CeBIT had already that we have reported on over the years, but share element from Sharp, but CEC is the been announced at CES and Mobile World somehow the firm has slipped through our dominant partner. Congress. net (no pun intended!). Butterfly is a Chinese Our final meeting at CeBIT was with EVGA, BOE was on the Chinese Partnership booth specialist in pico-projection, originally with the maker of high end graphics cards. The and had a number of panels on display in- cluding a FullHD panel for medical applica- Butterfly has Pico projectors with Android and flexible remotes as well as tions with brightness of 725 cd/m2 and a 27" autofocus 2560 x 1440 panel with 99.8% (how frustrat- ing! - Man. Ed.) of AdobeRGB support and brightness of 350 cd/mm². It uses the QD Vision glass tube-based QDs to achieve the wide gamut and will start to ship in Q2. Al- ready in mass production is a new 23.8" UltraHD panel with 98% of sRGB gamut. Finally, we looked at a 13.3" 2560 x 1440 resolution panel for notebooks. BOE was also highlighting its OGS (One Glass Solution) touch which can support 10 finger touch and uses an ITO electrode pat- tern on a separate glass sheet, which is pro- duced in BOE’s own factory and can be sup- plied with panels in an integrated module. It was shown on a 15.6" notebook panel, but can support sizes from 8" and a 23.8" version is “currently waiting for customer qualifica-

Mobile Display Monitor 15 20 March 2015 Event Report - CeBIT 2015

KTC had a booth but no news. “We just have some TVs”, we were told, “but nothing special”. Fantastic marketing! Optoma had no new updates since ISE, but was showing the UST interactive projec- tor that it had demonstrated there. RealVNC is a UK-based supplier of remote connection software used for support and remote control operations. It has a number of major contracts including Intel, which uses the firm’s technology to support its VPro PCs. An unusual feature of the software is that linking servers (to link the client to the sup- port worker) can be run within private net- EVGA showed us what it takes to cool one of its high end cards! works, rather than through public cloud serv- ers, which is appealing to corporates. In addi- company was showing its Kingpin 4 way separate one on its own. There is a new in- tion, the company’s technology can survive SLI card that is said to be a world record dustrial design that is more aimed at con- reboots and allow remote technicians to ac- holder in terms of overclocking. It’s a while sumers than the traditional designs from the cess the BIOS settings of remote machines. since I looked at this extreme end of the firm and the new models will be in 21.5", 23" As well as PC applications, RealVNC has graphics board market and it seems that and 23.8" versions. The firm told us that it will deals in transport for remote diagnostics and things have progressed. Apparently, the best be introducing a new 39.5" UltraHD monitor. way to achieve the extreme overclocking needed to be the fastest, liquid nitrogen is the preferred coolant! Marginally more accessible is the 980 Hy- brid CCS card which uses a closed loop cool- ing system. Standard liquid cooling systems for graphics cards may be prone to leaks and need the liquid changing on an annual basis, but the Hybrid card uses a factory sealed closed loop cooling system for easier instal- lation and a fully leakproof system. It will be available in April and pricing is being listed at around $800 plus tax in Europe. A new 4GB version of the 960 SSC card is starting to ship today and is available from this week. EVGA told us that the amount of data in- volved in supporting UltraHD using multiple graphics cards is a real challenge. We were sworn to secrecy over the details, but suffice it to say that EVGA believes it has an answer. Fujitsu had several booths, but there was nothing new in client devices, we were told, HKC has improved its consumer id in STBs, including a deal with Comcast. The as we reported on a new tablet from MWC. software is also used for remote access to There were no new displays and we have Iiyama told us that it had nothing new, but medical data by GE and Philips Medical. The previously reported on some haptics tech- then put out a press release about two new technology, embedded in scanners, allows nology from Fujitsu Japan at MWC and at monitors (Iiyama Expands VA Product Lineup). a single operator to monitor multiple patients the Fujitsu Forum. Staff told us that it is get- In line with corporate policy, Iiyama in Ger- from a single workstation. ting close to licensing the technology, which many is focusing on touch. It is happy to sell At the show RealVNC announced that it is particularly good at emulating different tex- mainstream monitors, but is not chasing busi- has been working with AMD to make use tures on displays, to device makers. ness to simply build turnover. New in Germany of AMD's Rapid Fire Pro to access the HKC had a booth within the API area and a was the 55" procap monitor that we reported on at ISE. RealVNC libraries, using the GPU to encode

20 March 2015 16 Mobile Display Monitor Event Report - CeBIT 2015 the streams and allowing remote access to virtualised workstations or remote workstations, even running very graphics intensive applications. The technology can be used, for example, to allow skilled work- ers to access their workstations from home or from remote locations and yet get a fast, low latency, connection to the power of the workstation. Stino Eyevis was in Hall 2 to promote its special CMS technology for digital signage solutions, which it believes are scalable from small companies to large installations. SuperTab is a Belgian company that can supply tablets under its own brand or with private labels. The company has a range of products available from 7" to 10" and with different specifications. It specialises in configuring tablets to fit clients' require- ments. For example, it recently developed the S7Kids tablet following a request from Dubai for a rugged tablet for young users. The company also supplies "everything you need" from cables to earphones and even cases in the box. Despite this, prices are com- petitive and the S7Kids sells for less than €100 including sales tax. All the tablets run Ultmost's UST projector has an Android. integrated document camera University of Saarland Strong on We reported on Ultmost at CeBIT 2011 Visual Computing Ansi Lumens. Staff told us that a feature of its technology is "complete connectivity" with We spoke first to three groups from the MicroUSB and SD cards as well as support University of Saarland, which has strong dis- for Miracast. play-related interests - we have written be- Another new product that was said to be fore about the Visual Computing Institute that getting interest was an ultra short throw is working with Intel on “Display as a Serv- (UST) interactive projector, using the compa- ice”. ny's own optical pen detection. The projec- The first group has been looking at devel- tor is said to be selling well in China where oping low cost and low volume simple dis- the high level of integration is appreciated. play fabrication processes. It is using EL inks The projector has an integrated PC and also (from Gwent in the UK) to create the display Supertab's S7Kids tablet was designed a document camera, making it easy to show surface which is then touch-enabled, allow- for a client in Dubai objects and documents on the display. ing the development of low cost custom dis- plays. The patterns for the four display layers when it showed a prototype projector based are created using standard vector-based PC on Sony's SXRD LCOS technology. It is still Hall 9 Points to Germany’s Strength software such as Adobe Illustrator, and then trying to sell that design, but told us that sales We would have liked more time to get deposited using screen printing (although had been slow. Ultmost uses the "Fuss" around Hall 9, which is devoted to new tech- we noted that the group’s literature also made brand. nologies and R & D. If you are a real technol- reference to inkjet printing of the patterns). More promising areas for Ultmost include ogy geek, almost every item could be of Patterns can be segmented, multi-seg- mini- and pico-projectors. These have An- some interest. The demonstrations highlight mented or even passive matrix layouts. droid built-in and Wi-Fi connectivity and use the strength of R & D in Germany. The substrate used can be paper or PET, DLP imagers. There are 10 different versions but also unconventional materials such as available depending on specification re- leather, stone, wood or metal. quests and brightness can be from 50 to 200

Mobile Display Monitor 17 20 March 2015 Event Report - CeBIT 2015

showed that just two of the forty had their heads held upright in a way that would not cause neck discomfort and potential dam- age. One solution to this is to encourage us- ers to hold their devices higher up, but this, in turn leads to musculo-skeletal problems in the shoulders and back. The researchers have developed a tool, based on 3D capture and biomechanical simulation, to help system designers to un- derstand the effects on the user of prolonged use of these devices, and of touch screens in general. With this knowledge, system de- signers can monitor the user and “nudge” the user to change position and move to counter the potential of RSI injuries. Fraunhofer Shows Player Recognition Saarland Menu with printable EL allows the hexagonal touch display element at The Fraunhofer HHI from Berlin has moved the bottom of this menu forward from the “virtual camera” technol- The display electrodes can also be used watching the movements of the eye and com- ogy that it was showing at IFA. The group is for simple touch control to allow displays to puting an average so that the appropriate developing technology to allow windows be used as touch switches. scrolling speed can be maintained. The ulti- within a very high resolution video image For the group, the key to this development mate concept of the research is to allow (8K Super Hi-vision or more) to be selected is very low cost and easy to use technology multiple users to access displays and each and which can track either viewer’s (or direc- so that very low numbers of very simple dis- be presented with the right reading material tor’s) viewports or can also be programmed plays can easily be created, perhaps by “print at the right speed. At present, the system to follow individual players in sports (the ex- shops”. A barrier to many of these applica- can support three independent readers. ample was being shown of a player being tions is the junction between the hard world Contact [email protected] for more tracked during a soccer match). of silicon and the flexible world and we heard information. The HHI has now further developed the that this is often the case in flexible and This editor’s enthusiasm for gaze is well known - and technology to allow the idenitification of in- printed electronics. There is good work go- controlling reading speed was one of the useful appli- dividual players within a window and was ing on either side of the connection, said the cations that is being developed. However, I found it showing a viewport with named players at group, but sometimes how to make the con- very disconcerting that the text that I was focused on the show. was moving when the display scrolled. The scrolling nection efficiently is not clear. Contact [email protected] was not very smooth and I was trying to read Ger- Gaze is Used to Scroll Text for man, which I am weak at, and these are both factors Multiple Readers that could have made the task more difficult. I also The next group we spoke to is looking at wonder how soon it would be that we have sensor technology that is accurate enough to estimate the using gaze control to control text display rates. gaze from multiple viewers at long distances without We put on the eye-tracking glasses and tried calibration. Even though I was using a head-mounted the system. As well as looking at the simple gaze tracker, it took two calibration attempts before I tracking, the group has been working on could get the system to work. (BR) how to allow multiple users to look at the same display and scroll different columns of Smartphones and Tablets are text, or parts of the columns of text at the Bad for your Health same time. The software divides text col- The third group from the University was umns into functional blocks and as the eye looking at problems in posture and health moves towards the top or bottom of the block, caused by the over use of tablets and scrolling of the text happens as though the smartphones. Users of these devices tend block was a window onto the text. to adopt a very bad posture with the head The text scrolling speed is calculated by tipped very far forward. A study of 40 users

20 March 2015 18 Mobile Display Monitor Opinion & Editorial

The End of an Era (Final Chapter)

Philips Research will Briarcliff Manor in 1965, after acquiring more serves to focus company research on its close its Briarcliff labs than 100 acres of the estate property of healthcare and lighting businesses. and move the opera- American banker James Speyer. The move punctuates another change, too. tion to a technology For nearly a decade, the labs were the heart Philips Research, along with Bell Labs, CBS hub in Massachu- of advanced digital video development work Labs, and the David Sarnoff Research Center setts, the company for Philips products in North America, mar- – collectively, among the world’s foremost quietly announced last October. According keted under the Magnavox name. Briarcliff brain trust in advanced video technology R & to a letter to staff from Philips Research head R & D was responsible for receiving three D, and all within 50 miles of New York City – Hans-Aloys Wischmann, the move to Cam- Emmy Awards, for contributions to the Grand have either closed facilities or transitioned bridge, Mass. will be completed by Sept. 1, Alliance (ATSC) Digital TV standards, UHP away from video research. This is not to say 2015. The lab is part of a worldwide network (Ultra High Performance) lamp technology that video technology, especially in new dis- of research facilities operated by Dutch giant for large-screen TVs, , and ghost canceling in plays and compression systems, does not Royal Philips. TV reception. Among other innovations, continue to progress; it’s just distributed Philips spokesperson Lea Armstrong con- Briarcliff research also made possible the across entities far and wide. But the Hudson firmed that employees will be offered relo- industry’s first readily-available, large-scale, Valley/Princeton corridor of video technology cation. “This is not a restructuring, and we single-panel liquid crystal-on-silicon (LCoS) is no more. hope to move with as many people as possi- ble”, she wrote. “The relocation will also lev- erage the proximity to Philips’ business head- quarters and offers co-location opportuni- ties”, she told us. In recent years, the Briarcliff facility has fo- cused on healthcare systems and lighting, and has also included the seat of Philips In- tellectual Property & Standards. The labs, which held over 300 staff in the heyday of digital television research, currently hosts 125 employees. Philips plans to sell the campus, according to Armstrong. Sale of the prop- erty, located in affluent Briarcliff Manor, NY and overlooking the Hudson River, should bring in a sizable sum. William Mooney, di- rector of the Westchester County Office of display (one of whose developers is long- Part of the Philips/Sarnoff Advanced Economic Development, said the Philips time Display Daily analyst Matt Brennesholtz). Television Research team, circa 1992 departure is not a setback for the county, The move is part of a shift by Philips away where economic development officials have from consumer electronics and towards One final note - this will be my last regular long promoted technology and research. other, more profitable, businesses, selling piece for Display Daily, as I embark on a Philips’ original U.S. laboratory opened in their CE product divisions and brand-name number of new undertakings, including ATSC Irvington, NY around 1944, and moved to licenses to various entities, including TPV, 3.0, interactive content systems, unmanned Funai and Gibson. (Funai/P & F USA is re- aerial systems, and an entrepreneurial ven- sponsible for the sourcing, distribution, mar- ture. It’s been a pleasure working alongside keting and sales of television products in so many gifted writers and analysts here at North America; the current deal expires at Meko, and at Insight Media before that - a the end of 2015, and Philips has begun dis- collaboration that started 10 years ago this cussions on renewing the deal.) With most month! I won’t disappear from the scene video development long gone from Briarcliff, entirely, however, so watch for my contribu- the transfer of personnel to Cambridge tions again from time to time. All the best! - Aldo Cugnini

Mobile Display Monitor 19 20 March 2015 Opinion & Editorial Atheer Labs has Unique IP to help Augmented Reality Adoption

Atheer Labs (Mountain They call this capability “comfortable visual engine, you can call up a parts list and place it View, CA) is one of many ergonomics” and it is different than reduc- to the left of your work space while your task companies focused on ing motion artifacts and latency, although list is displayed on the right side. Want to opportunities in the aug- these must be eliminated as well. see what the next task is – just turn you head mented reality space. Art to the right as if the list was on a table next to Berman provided a nice overview of the com- you. pany back in February (Introducing the Atheer Ketan Joshi, Atheer Labs’ VP of Marketing, Augmented Reality Glasses), and this article told us more about the applications for the provides an update based on a new inter- AiR Smart Glasses. “We are seeing good pull view with the company. from users in the industrial space, oil and As Art mentioned in his article, Atheer Labs gas, healthcare and recent, insurance appli- is basically a software company that is devel- cations. All of these areas have needs where oping a hardware platform to showcase what hands-free access to information is critical”. it can do for the augmented reality space. He explained that industrial applications The hardware is a dual-display/dual camera include repair and maintenance of high value eyeglass device that features technology equipment like turbines, engines and other sourced from partners. The current Aug- gear in aircraft and heavy equipment. Oil and mented interactive Reality (AiR) Smart The other key innovation is a gesture con- gas applications include a variety of field op- Glasses device features dual OLED panels trol solution that seeks to provide people with erations again in repair and maintenance. with XGA resolution to create a wide 38-40 a natural way to interact with the displayed Healthcare applications include access to degree field of view. A next generation de- information. That has not really been possi- patient data and records, especially while in vice will feature LCOS panels with higher ble before. Most existing gesture based so- the OR or ER. “We have heard that every resolution, increased brightness and a larger lutions feature crude movement of hands time a surgeon has to scrub out of the OR, field of view. Mass production plans have and arms to perform some very basic inter- go check some patient data and scrub back not been announced, but the company has active commands. “People’s arms actually in, it costs the hospital $1500. Any device a partnership with Flextronics and is expected get tired doing this after awhile”, com- that can eliminate this expense can be justi- to announce something shortly. mented Itani. fied pretty easily”, noted Joshi. The key innovations at the company are Finer gesture movements have been diffi- Another emerging area is insurance where centered around two items: a gesture inter- cult as increasing the resolution of the cap- adjusters can do visual inspections of new action paradigm and - advanced visual ergo- ture led to heavy power consumption. To properties or damage of existing property, nomics. reduce power consumption, developers re- documenting all with the built-in camera or According to Soulaiman Itani, the company duced resolution and/or backed off the frame connecting to the home office to discuss CTO, the visual ergonomics feature is like a rate. Atheer Labs has solved this trade off something while in the field. This video ex- personal profile of your particular eyes and with a new solution that allows resolution pert capability has value in all these applica- viewing comforts characteristics. He ex- fine enough for finger accuracy that mimics tions. plained that every person’s eyes are differ- how you interact with a tablet, but drawing Joshi sees these enterprise applications ent in terms of separation, spectral response, far less power. How much less? Itani didn’t dominating early adoption of AR, but its use luminance response, 3D viewing comfort provide any hard numbers, but what he did will start to grow into the prosumer market ranges, etc. By measuring all of these and say was that it will not seriously impact the in a few years as well. other factors upfront, a profile can be cre- run time of the AiR Smart Glasses. The company is offering its second gen- ated for every user. “This allows us to cus- These and other features are all rolled up eration developers kit now that includes im- tomize every image we present to make sure in their AiR OS. This also includes the ability provements based on user feedback. You it is always easy to look at and comfortable – to lock items in the 3D space you are work- can sign up here. something that users of other AR headsets ing in. For example, if you are wearing the - Chris Chinnock have complained about”. AiR Smart Glasses and working to repair an

20 March 2015 20 Mobile Display Monitor Opinion & Editorial Smartwatches - The Future of Wearables?

Wearables were smartwatch? mainly represented by When we follow the likes of Dick Tracy, the smartwatches at MWC key is communication in the form of two 2015. Most top OEMs way radio or even video calling. Other ven- have smartwatches in dors are going the route of putting the high- their portfolio or have first est number of functions into their devices in models announced with many new an- the hope that the consumer finds something nouncements coming out at the MWC 2015 that appeals to him. Then there are the spe- in Barcelona. cialized devices that focus on certain niche The observer is seeing two main ap- applications such as racing, climbing, diving, Martian Guess Connect proaches to this market. There is the smart etc. While they may not attract a large mar- creation of a smart watch type user inter- version of the digital watch as marketed by ket, they may be essential products in their face, the traditional watch companies extend Casio since 1974 and than there is the typi- market achieving high market penetration in their offering into more networking functions cal wristwatch (round or rectangular) that their niche markets. We also see more es- related to other mobile devices. shows the user a typical watch face on its tablished watch brands entering the market The recent Apple event announcing more high resolution display. with what one could call hybrid watches. details of the Apple Watch shows three main MWC 2015 provided plenty of opportuni- While maintaining their traditional style of a aspects Apple is pushing. There is commu- ties for both types to show their respective mechanical wristwatch they add very small nication, health and design. Arguably, com- face to the world. Differentiators include display segments to provide additional infor- munication and health have been addressed price, size, operating system, as well as func- mation including messages and such. by other manufacturers since the beginning, tionality. Most smartwatches today are An- Many devices are already capable of these though there is still a difference between droid-based and operate in conjunction with tasks, however so far consumer interest has the different devices mostly based on the the smartphone of the user. Some models not been overwhelming. Several million units user interface and input method. While Ap- do also offer their own cellular radio to allow have been sold, but after strong sales follow- ple claims superiority based on the user in- for complete standalone functionality. This ing their respective releases, sales have been terface, as the strong suite of the company’s is, however, still the exception. slow. This is not the sign of the kind of con- identity, the question remains if this will be One particular product concept is the high sumer enthusiasm that these companies are enough to sway the way consumers look at end fitness band. Most fitness bands are hoping for. smartwatches. A survey by NBC in the US, pure sensing devices that have minimal dis- The question for the OEMs remains “What on the day after the Apple event, showed plays or none at all. As the price point in- type and function will resonate with the con- that about half of the responses were actu- creases, more functionality is added lead- sumer?”. ally positive; this is higher than other sur- ing to larger and higher resolution display While the consumer electronics compa- veys I have seen. Also about half of the re- use. Fitbit as a leader in the fitness band nies follow the idea of incorporating high sponses claimed interest in the Apple Watch. market demonstrates this very well. resolution displays that are as large as possi- Nevertheless this is a steep hill to climb, but So what makes a smart watch a ble to replace the watch face and allow the Apple may be the best company in the world right now to lead the way. Smartwatches: Fitbit Charge, Huawei TalkBand B2, LG Watch Urbane The third aspect Apple is pushing in its watch is the design aspect. Some of the later watches seem to finally acknowledge that wristwatches are as much about fashion as they are about timekeeping. In addition, for now, Apple is also holding the record for the most expensive consumer smart watch with a price tag of $10k for the 18 karat pure gold version, while the cheapest one starts at $349 for the small sport edition. Apple is also expanding the Apple Pay func-

Mobile Display Monitor 21 20 March 2015 Opinion & Editorial

tion to the Apple Watch, making it basically a watch approach does not offer much in strong initial sales, but in the long run the credit card on the wrist. So far Apple Pay is terms of functionality, the big screen ap- question is how people keep using the de- still considered a safe payment method, proach seems extremely nerdy. Remember vice after the initial excitement is gone. Fit- however one should not underestimate the those Casio watches with calculators that ness bands show a strong drop off after a resourcefulness of the hacker community. required a microscope to see the keyboard few months, a fate that smartwatches may In most cases the question is not if a system and extremely good hand eye coordination share as well, unless you invested $10k for is being hacked, but when. to hit the right keys? the gold version. While I personally do not wear a watch The industry hopes for Apple to change all - Norbert Hildebrand every day, neither approach would make me this, but I am not as optimistic for the change my position. While the traditional upcoming release as many others. I see

One Connector to Rule Them All...

Last week, Apple, along said (here - subscription required) it “could although it moved the design into VESA for with its new Watch prod- become the next de facto connection stand- standardisation, in 2008. It developed the very ucts, announced its latest ard for IT and consumer devices”. As well as neat magnetic charging connector which it MacBook notebook. One USB 3.0 and display signals, the Type C can has dropped for Type-C and not every user of the stand out features carry power, allowing it to be used for charg- will think that it’s an improvement. was that the small size ing. The weight of just 2lbs for the new note- and weight, enabled, in Physically, the connector is small (although book is compelling. but road warriors will add part, by the decision to have just two con- we have heard that some mobile device to that. If you like operating the computer with nectors on the body - a 3.5mm jack for audio makers would like it even thinner) and is re- a mouse, and you want to use it when the and a USB Type-C connector for everything versible - it can be inserted either way up notebook is charging, then you will need an else. without problems. That’s a great move - the adaptor (($79 from Apple for a converter from The latest Chromebook Pixel also features power connector on my notebook does the USB C to HDMI/Type-C and Type A USB), but two of these connectors. Just two is a stark same and it can save a lot of fiddling. there will be cheaper ones). You’ll need adap- contrast to the notebook that I’m using to At the moment, Type C connectors and tors to connect to VGA, HDMI or DisplayPort write this - a Lenovo ThinkPad that has nine controllers cost more than standard USB - and I meet all of those visiting different com- connectors (power, three USB, VGA, connectors, we hear around $5, but eventu- panies. If you want more than one USB de- miniDisplayPort, SD card, VGA, 3.5mm jack). ally the sheer scale of adoption should drive vice, you’ll need a USB hub. If you want to connect to wired ethernet, you’ll need an adap- tor. Now, I’m a great fan of wireless technolo- gies, but I often find myself in press situa- tions where hundreds of journalists are try- The USB Type C with an optional DisplayPort that down - after all, there have been few con- ing to log onto a limited wireless system and “Alt mode” was announced just five months nectors that have been endorsed by all three getting nowhere. In this circumstance, the ago and at the time, our own Chris Chinnock of the operating system giants - Apple, joy of finding a wired ethernet connection is Google and Microsoft. intense - I speak with feeling about this as I The design of the MacBook is very slick had this experience twice at Mobile World and elegant with its single tiny connector. It Congress in Barcelona - once at the Samsung is also quite a turn-around for Apple to adopt Unpacked press event and once in the press an industry standard connector. It has been room where I needed to upload a big video pushing the Thunderbolt and Lightning in- file. terfaces for some time and has a history of So, if I had the very desirable new working out its own solutions. Apple was the developer of the mini-DisplayPort interface

20 March 2015 22 Mobile Display Monitor Opinion & Editorial

MacBook, I suspect I’d end up with some As Chris said in his original article, there will USB was a huge step forward partly be- kind of “mobile docking station” to connect be lots of Type-C options and that could be cause it arrived at the same time as Win- everything, or a bag of dongles and adaptors, the cause of confusion for users, especially dows 95 and supported “Plug & Play” (al- which offsets some of the advantage of the consumers. The connector is very small, so though another real advantage was that the slim size and low weight. it’s hard to label to give clues to what is sup- asymetric architecture meant that low cost Too Many Permutations? ported. Now, mobile phones are likely to peripherals were possible, whereas peer-to- migrate to the type C sooner rather than later. peer interfaces like 1394 needed quite a lot Apple’s multiport adaptor costs $79 Will all consumers realise that the charger of silicon in the connected device). By now, that they use for their phones might charge USB has displaced serial ports, parallel ports, their notebook in theory, but in practice will IEEE interfaces, external SCSI, Firewire not do so in any reasonable time scale? (P1394), e-Sata, Thunderbird and now looks How will a user know if a Type-C has the to usurp native Ethernet connectors. I spoke DisplayPort Alt Mode? I can see a fair amount to someone last week that has USB charg- of irritation and, potentially calls to technical ing ports on all his kitchen power points. support over this kind of issue. Of course, the dream remains to go wire- Type-C is also symmetric for power supply less, and the next variant of Wi-Fi - 802.11ad - it can flow either way, so it’s important to could replace many of the features of Type- make sure all the handshaking works be- C. Qualcomm, at the recent MWC event was tween systems (and the symmetry of power showing 802.11ad wireless docking sta- delivery does mean that it might be possible tions). However, it’s still more efficient (if less to make intelligent choices about how and convenient) to deliver power with wires and where to share available power between it will be a while before 802.11ad, with its devices). support for displays and storage devices, is Happy Birthday (nearly) USB pervasive enough to leave cables at home. Still, the dominance of USB is incredible. Display interfaces have also been through We wrote about the first announcement of a long evolution from VGA, through “Plug & USB at a Winhec event in Display Monitor Display”, VEVC, DFP, DVI and various versions Vol 2 No 12 at the end of March 1995 - so of DisplayPort, as well as HDMI. MHL, based twenty years ago in a couple of week’s time. on HDMI, is still a competitor to DisplayPort It’s amazing to think that this interface sup- in the mobile space and we will be watching ported just 12 Mbits/second (compared to out for support of the MHL alternate mode 10GBps for Superspeed USB 3.1 now) and to see if it can fight back. For the moment, that one of its first target applications was though, USB-C with DisplayPort has some telephony on the PC/network. For some real momentum. time, it looked as though mice and keyboards - Bob Raikes might be the main users of the interface.

In Brief - Channels, Green

new technologies. The 2015 review began with Channels in Europe Green News the publication of draft criteria for displays, on the 19th March. Many of the criteria in the John Lewis EHT Sales up 8% in TCO Reviews TCO Certified document will be shared with other product 2014 Criteria groups, scheduled for release later in the year. UK-based John Lewis’ electricals and home A new generation of TCO Certified will be technology (EHT) business grew 7.9% year introduced this year, with a focus on environ- on year in 2014, despite what the firm de- mental, social and economic sustainability scribed as a “challenging”market. The com- throughout the product life cycle. TCO De- pany said sales of large electricals and audio velopment reviews the criteria of TCO Certi- products rose throughout the year, and every fied every three years, to remain in-line with channel and category grew.

Mobile Display Monitor 23 20 March 2015 In Brief - Semiconductors, Smartphones, Software, Supply

HTC Expects Double-Digit address the huge number of pirated copies Semiconductor News Smartphone Rise of Windows in China, where it is estimated Taiwan’s HTC expects its domestic that 75% of PCs in the country use a hacked Synaptics Combines Touch and smartphone shipments to rise more than version of the OS. Display Driver 50% YoY in Q1. A double-digit rise, possibly Synaptics has developed the Clearpad higher than 50% is also predicted in Q2 Supply Chain News 4191 and Clearpad 4291: the world’s first thanks to the launch of the new HTC One touch and display driver integration (TDDI) M9. AUO Focuses on Five Areas for solutions for smartphones and tablets, ac- Panel Promotions cording to the company. These new solu- Samsung Commits to Premium AUO is focusing on five key areas to pro- tions combine the touch controller and dis- Materials mote panel sales this year, said president play driver into a single chip, simplifying de- Joint Samsung CEO Shin Jong-Kyun has Paul Peng. They are UltraHD resolution; sign. said that the company will launch more mo- curved display technology; integrated touch; The Clearpad 4291, which is available now, bile devices using premium materials in the image improvement technologies such as supports hybrid in-cell touch designs. It ena- future. Shin specifically mentioned high-reso- wide colour gamut; and added-value func- bles the elimination of a separate touch sen- lution displays, metal bodies and slim de- tions for industrial, enterprise, car-use and sor by leveraging existing layers in the LCD signs. The news follows the launch of the wearable applications. AUO will produce display. The 4191, being supplied as sam- Galaxy S6 at MWC (Samsung Unpacks Two more panel sizes to support UltraHD resolu- ples to tier one OEMs now, goes further; it New Phones). tion, and due to this its average TV panel size leverages existing electrodes in the LCD dis- will rise from 43" to 44" this year. In a separate play to register touches. Microsoft Takes Over Android report from Liberty Times Net, AUO is said Last week, we reported that Tianma was claiming to Phones to be developing 75" and 85" LCD panels be the only supplier of in-cell touch with a single driver Microsoft is testing Windows 10 with se- with quantum dot technology. chip. It was not clear that the firm was using this lect users of Xiaomi’s Mi 4 smartphone - which Synaptics chip, however. (BR) normally runs Android. According to 30% Yield Rate Rumoured for Techcrunch’s sources, Windows is provided Apple Watch as a flashable ROM that effectively overrides Smartphone News G is For Games claims that Quanta, which Android, turning the phone into a Windows manufactures the Apple Watch, has a yield handset. According to a statement, Microsoft Nanoscale’s Coating rate of just 30%. It is unclear at this time is also planning to launch this service for Waterproofs Electronics what is causing the problems. Quanta has more mobile devices - reinforcing the plat- taken on 3,000 Foxconn workers to help solve UK-based Nanoscale has developed a prod- form-agnostic approach that it has been tak- the issues, according to the source. uct called Flash Flood, which - it claims - will ing in recent years. make electronics water-resistant. The coat- Sapphire Capacity Expands in ing is supplied in the form of a liquid; after Software News China three coats (including in the ports), plus dry- ing time, electronics will be protected Biel Crystal Manufactory and Lens Tech- against accidental splashes. CNN found that Windows 10 Arriving This nology, Chinese sapphire makers, have ex- a phone can even be submerged for a short Summer panded their production capacities, accord- time (http://tinyurl.com/n8lb4d6). The prod- Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10 ing to industry sources. The companies uct is a nanotechnology coating that is UV- will be released this summer. The update made the move due to the growing adop- and fingerprint-resistant, and does not inter- will be free for users of Windows 7, Win- tion of sapphire in wearable and smartphone fere with charging or touch operation. dows 8 and Windows 8.1 for the first year - applications. Biel Crystal and China’s Roshow and yes, that includes non-genuine copies. Technology have apparently invested an ad- The move is thought to be an attempt to ditional CNY200 million ($32 million) in their JV (Biel Roshow Sapphire), which was es- tablished a year ago. Meanwhile, Lens Tech- nology has established a subsidiary maker specifically for producing sapphire.

20 March 2015 24 Mobile Display Monitor In Brief - Supply, Technology

Xiaomi to Open Plant in India Ball placement technology means that MSL is encapsulated inside this closed loop as a with Foxconn and Inventec arrays can be manufactured easily, so displays coolant. The heat from the heat source evapo- Xiaomi is reported to be in talks with Foxconn could be made at a low cost. MSL technol- rates the coolant, and the energy that goes Electronics and Inventec about setting up a ogy also lowers crosstalk, said the research- into evaporating the coolant is taken away joint venture smartphone plant in India. The ers, although focusing light in this way does from the heat source, lowering its tempera- Indian government is currently promoting the lower brightness. The researchers plan to ture. It is based off of the same principle used production of industrial products in India. address this in the future, as well as improv- when sprinkling water on pavement to re- ing the resolution and optical efficiency. They duce heat’. ET News Details Flexible OLED are also attempting to slim the display down, Patterning in the system is performed by Plans as the MSL array adds to its thickness. etching metal sheets - so the pipe layout and ET News has summarised information The work was published in IEEE’s Journal heat transferred can be customised on a per- about the flexible OLED plans for LG Display of Display Technology: http://tinyurl.com/ device basis. Fujitsu aims to have a working and Samsung Display. LGD currently has a oozf9uu. system with manufacturers in 2017. monthly capacity of 14,000 substrates (LGD QMC Breaks Stokes-Shift Barrier Succeeds in Doubling Flexible Capacity), and for Brighter Displays is now said to be building a G6 line with an LSD microstructures on the EUT spread initial capacity of 7,500 substrates, scaling to The ‘Stokes-shift’ is the difference between light to reduce hot spots and dark spots 15,000. Construction will apparently begin a quantum dot’s (QD) peak excitation and in Q3. For its part, SDC currently produces peak emission wavelengths. Minimising the 8,000 flexible OLED substrates per month overlap between these bands enhances the in a G5.5 line, and is finishing a new G6.5 clarity and brightness of a fluorescing QD, by line. ET News says that capacity will be avoiding re-absorption of emitted light into 15,000 substrates per month. nearby QDs. Until now, says Quantum Materials Corp, it Nanosys Doubles QD Capacity has not been possible to produce a Stokes- on UltraHD Demand shift in QDs up to 20nm - at least, not in suf- ficient quantities for manufacturing applica- Nanosys has doubled its quantum dot pro- Fujitsu Aims to Liquid-Cool tions. However, the company claims to have duction capacity, to 25 tons per year. The new Mobile Devices capacity enables Nanosys to provide optical broken the Stokes-shift barrier and is able to Fujitsu uses liquid cooling in its SPARC serv- components to more than 6 million 60" produce ‘strong-shift’ QDs with consistent ers, and is preparing a similar system for UltraHD TVs a year and the company now characteristics in high volumes. mobile devices. Liquid Loop Cooling is a claims to be the biggest provider of QDs in closed system using pumps to move cool- the world. ant around a motherboard, although pumps would not be viable in the smaller form fac- Technology News tors of smartphones, tablets and laptops. In- stead, Fujitsu has developed a loop heat pipe Microspherical Lenses Bypass that is less than 1mm thick. 3D Angle Issues According to the company, ‘A loop heat pipe Glasses-free 3D is seen as the ‘holy grail’ of is a heat-transfer device that consists of an QMC says that its continuous-flow produc- 3D display. The technology has several draw- evaporator that absorbs heat from the heat tion process enables automated synthesis backs, such as viewing ‘sweet spots’, but a source and a condenser that dissipates that with the uniformity necessary for achieving team of researchers at Chengdu Technologi- heat away, with the two components con- precise characteristics for high-volume pro- cal University and Sichuan University are nected by pipes into a loop. A working fluid duction of highly-driven strong-shift QDs. working on making auto-stereo 3D viable. Luminit’s Uniformity Tape The work revolves around the use of microsphere-lens (MSL) arrays on the display, Spreads Light to Reduce Hot rather than flat microlenses. Parallax barrier Spots technology, which most auto-stereo 3D is Wide-spaced LED lighting can suffer from based on, has a viewing angle of between several issues, including hot spots and non- 20° and 30°. These lenses, however, have uniform characteristics, said Luminit. These boosted the viewing angle to 32°, with a theo- artifacts can become visible on the edge of retical maximum of 90°. LED-backlit TVs.

Mobile Display Monitor 25 20 March 2015 In Brief - Technology, TV, Warranty, Wearable

Wearable News

NFC Makes Swatch Watches Smarter Swatch claims to have worked around the limitations of smartwatches - small screens, low battery life and ‘inelegant’ designs - through the integration of some smart func- tions into its existing products, using NFC. The technology will enable the timepieces to be used for tasks such as cashless pay- ments and hotel room access. There are still no plans to produce a Swatch smartwatch, though. CEO Nick Hayek said, “We are not a consumer technology company... We don’t want to produce a reduced, minimised mo- bile phone on your wrist”.

Adding more LED lights is an option, al- though this makes the display or lighting fix- TV in Brief USA ture more expensive. California-based Luminit, which specialises in lighting diffus- Apple Preparing TV Service ers, has developed a lower-cost solution (Again...) called Edge-lit Uniformity Tape (EUT). There have been many rumours about an EUT can be applied to a light guide plate Apple TV service, stretching back four years during the assembly process. It uses or more. Now the all-knowing ‘people famil- Luminit’s Light Shaping Diffuser (LSD) tech- iar with the matter’ have told the Wall Street nology, which diffuses LED light sources. The Journal that the company plans to launch EUT uses LSD microstructures, embedded such a service in the autumn. There will be on a polyester film; these microstructures 25 channels and it will be able to be streamed Hayek praised the Apple Watch, saying increase the LEDs’ divergence, so the light by Apple devices. Apple is apparently talking that there is room for both Apple and mixes before it enters the display. to content owners ahead of a June announce- Swatch in the market Luminit says that the transmissivity of its ment. EUT is greater than 88%, while lighting panel Swiss Manufacturer Enters uniformity is more than 80%. Warranty ‘Smartwatch’ Market Swiss watch maker Breitling has taken the Apple to Expand iPhone Trade- step to produce a ‘smartwatch’ (of sorts) called Ins...to Android? the B55 Connected. It is an analogue chrono- graph with a digital display, able to connect 9 to 5 Mac claims that Apple will expand its to a mobile phone through a dedicated app. iPhone trade-in programme to include An- It is targeted at pilots, with features such as droid phones, in an effort to entice new us- the ability to easily time flights and backing ers. Apple staff will put a value on the device up data for logging and sharing through the and help customers to swap their contacts app. Pricing and availability have not been to a new phone. No hint at a timeline is pro- shared yet. vided, however. This looks like a more reasonable compromise be- tween classic timekeeping and modern electronics than the Apple Watch. I've recently been boring friends and family with my views on the high-end ($10,000) model of the device: while the Swiss watches at

20 March 2015 26 Mobile Display Monitor In Brief - Wearable these price levels will last for decades, the Apple The price on Indiegogo is $600, and it will cost nership with Apple, who is producing Watch is going to need replacing in two years, at the $900 at retail. Availability will be late 2015 or watches?” He added that the watch will have most. If there was a way to retain the expensive gold early 2016. a traditional look, saying, “Our watch will body of the Watch while switching out the electron- never look like a phone”. ics, I might be more convinced, but Tim Cook didn't WCO Eliminates Tarrifs on mention anything of the sort at his presentation. Galaxy Gear Oculus Confirms Dual-Display Of course, this is ignoring 'the Apple factor'! (TA) The World Customs Organisation in Belgium Use has decided that Samsung’s Galaxy Gear During a panel at the recent SXSW festival, smartwatch is a ‘mobile telecommunications’ Oculus VR’s Nate Mitchell announced that device, rather than a smartwatch. The deci- the latest prototype of the Oculus Rift head- sion means that the product can be exported set (Crescent Bay) uses two OLED displays - and imported between most countries with- not just one. It was revealed at CES this year out tariffs - which would be up to 10% in some that Crescent Bay used an OLED display countries, if the device were classified as a (widely thought to be the same 2560 x 1440 watch. Tariff eliminations could begin as early unit used in the Galaxy Note 4). Per-eye reso- as June, saving up to $13 million, according lution is much higher than in the Dev Kit 2 to Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance. (which split 1920 x 1080 resolution between Like the long-running monitor vs TV saga, this deci- both eyes) because of this. sion is based on the ITA agreement that ensures Neptune Expands ‘Duo’ Concept that IT products have 0% duty (BR) to Multiple Devices Tag Heuer Becomes First Swiss We covered the Neptune Duo handheld dis- Smartwatch Maker play/smartwatch concept last month (Nep- tune Reverses Watch/Phone Paradigm), and Tag Heuer, the Swiss watch manufacturer, the project has now reached Indiegogo - with has announced a partnership with Intel and Google to launch a smartwatch based on a few changes. The Neptune Suite adds an- Android Wear. The watch will be launched other peripheral: a 10" tablet-like device with this year. Jean-Claude Biver, president of Tag a keyboard, as well as a dongle to stream to Heuer owner LVMH’s watch division, said a TV. The Neptune Hub (watch) will last for that they could have worked with Google or two days on a charge, and the ‘phone’ and Apple, but asked “[W]hy should we do a part- ‘tablet’ peripherals have their own batteries that can transfer energy to the watch. Wire- The Neptune Suite consists of phone- less streaming is via WiGig, with speeds up and tablet-size peripherals; a keyboard to 7Gbps. The Neptune Hub runs Android with touchpad; headset; TV dongle; 5.0, with 3G/4G and a quad-core processor. and the smartwatch ‘brains’

Mobile Display Monitor 27 20 March 2015 Product News

Impression Pi Boasts paign also offers early access to the software sion Pi’s processor board uses an IR projec- development kit (SDK) and the company’s Pi tor and imagers to sense hand movements. Control Through Development Program. Computer vision algorithms process the Computer Vision According to the information currently avail- image of a user’s hands generate 3D ges- able, the Impression Pi is a headset that uses ture modelling. Position tracking is another a smartphone as the display (‘Like a more feature, although the company did not say fashionable [Google] Cardboard’, says uSens). how it is enabled. Compatible phones include the Moto X The dual camera module captures and dis- (2014); Nexus 5 and 6; Galaxy Note 4; iPhone plays real-world objects to the user on- 6 and 6 Plus; HTC Desire Eye and One M8; screen, overlaying VR image on top - creat- Xperia Z3; Xiaomi M4; LG’s G3' and the ing a form of augmented reality. The head- OnePlus One. set also features collision detection, to warn There are four versions of the product: users if they are too close to an object in the • Starter: just the headset real world. • Empower: also supplied with a proces- Finally, the Impression Pi is capable of head sor board to improve the VR experience. tracking. Also enables extra features, such as 3D The team behind the Kickstarter project gesture control. has manufacturing partners that made made uSens has launched a Kickstarter campaign • Core: a ‘DIY’ set for integration with other ‘numerous products that are already in your for an interactive, mobile VR headset called devices, such as drones. Includes a cam- pockets’. Impression Pi (appropriately launched on Pi era sensing module and computer vision So far, Starter packs are being sent to those Day). The company says that development algorithms to enable the extra features pledging $60 (early discount) - $80; the Core on hardware is nearly completed. from the Empower model. package is being sent to those pledging $200; The Kickstarter campaign is intended to • Master: an all-in-one integrated headset Empower to those pledging $250 (early dis- help uSens with final production and to intro- with a built-in display and processing sys- count) - $280; and the Master pack to those duce early adopters to the product. The cam- tem. pleding $360. Estimated delivery is Septem- The feature list is extensive. The Impres- ber - December this year.

Toshiba Produces Tiny The Satellite Click Mini L9W-B-102 is a new will last for up to seven hours. convertible tablet from Toshiba, offering up Windows 8.1 runs on a 1.33GHz Intel Atom Convertible PC to 13 hours of battery life in notebook mode. processor, with 2GB of RAM. The tablet fea- The device is a very small “Windows 8.1 With tures a micro-USB port and micro-HDMI out- Bing” model - just 8.9" - with minimal (32GB) put; the keyboard adds a full-size USB 2.0 local storage, although there is an SD slot for port. up to 128GB of extra space. The majority of Toshiba’s new convertible is part of its com- data - up to 1TB - is kept in the cloud. mitment to gaining a 12% market share in Despite its small form factor, the Click Mini the German and Austrian 2-in-1 space this has high resolution: 1920 x 1200, as well as year. It will be launched in the region in April, an IPS panel with 170° viewing angles. It for €335 ex VAT. weighs 479g in tablet mode and 989g with the docked keyboard. The tablet’s battery

Sharp’s POS System Sharp Europe has developed a new point- colour LCD screen. Sharp did not share any of-sale terminal, with a 15" colour LCD dis- more details about the displays. Uses Dual Flush play. The RZ-X850F is intended to be a sim- A quad-core Intel Celeron Bay Trail proces- Displays ple and reliable system with a modern de- sor runs Microsoft POS Ready 7 OS, with sign, according to Sharp. between 2GB and 8GB of RAM and a 128GB The display is set flush to the unit’s bezels. SSD. USB 3.0 (x4) and 2.0 (x2) ports are fea- It is IP66-compliant, with 300 cd/m² of bright- tured, as well as an RJ45 connection. ness. An additional customer-facing display The terminal is available now; price is on can be added; either a two-line unit or a 10" application.

20 March 2015 28 Mobile Display Monitor Product News

Asus’ UltraHD Notebook Asus’ new ultrabook, the Zenbook Pro A manual mode is also included, where us- UX501, features a 15.6" UltraHD display and ers can adjust settings as desired. Runs for Six Hours high-end specifications. Internally, the UX501 runs Windows 8.1 Aimed at demanding users - primarily on a quad-core Core i7 processor, with 16GB gamers - the UX501 features a slim (20.6mm) of RAM. Nvidia’s GTX 960M graphics card is aluminium chassis and will last for ‘more than’ featured, with up to 4GB of VRAM. An SSD six hours on battery (a 96Wh lithium-ion unit). using a PCIe x4 interface provides up to Pixel density on the display, which uses an 512GB of storage, with read/write speeds of IPS panel, is 282 ppi. The screen has 178° up to 1,400MB per second. viewing angles and colour gamuts of 72% In terms of connectivity, Asus has built dual- NTSC, 74% Adobe RGB and 100% sRGB. band 802.11ac WiFi into the Zenbook. The Colour temperature is factory calibrated. Ad- unit also features an optional Thunderbolt ditionally, the notebook is supplied with three port and USB 3.0 (x3) inputs. display modes: Vivid (for films), Eye Care (for Asus had not responded to our request for reduced blue light) and Normal (for daily use). launch information before we went to print.

Product Roundup Watches Smart). The wristwear uses a trans- Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge parent OLED screen on top of a mechanical smartphones are now available to pre-order watch, and will connect to Android, iOS and in the UK. They will go on sale on 10th April. Windows Phone devices. It will start at $550, A new version of Toshiba’s Portege Z20T with a limited edition version being sold for notebook (Toshiba’s Easyguard Protects its $1,250. Professional Hybrid) has been introduced. The Microsoft Band, the company’s fit- The Z20T-B-103 is a 12.5" convertible laptop Avnet Embedded is now stocking a 2.2" with a new Intel Core M-5Y51 processor and transflective TFT-LCD module from Logic 1920 x 1080 resolution. It has HDMI, RGB Technologies in EMEA. Under high ambient and USB 3.0 (x2) ports and will last for up to light, the (LED) backlight is not required. The 17 hours on battery in notebook mode, or LTTD240320022-L3-TF will be available for nine hours in tablet mode. Toshiba will be- at least three years. It has a 120:1 contrast gin to sell the unit in April, for €1,665. ratio, RGB and SPI interfaces and will oper- Vaio, the brand formerly a part of Sony ate in temperatures between -20° and 70°. and sold off last year (Display Monitor Vol 21 Resolution is 320 x 240, with a 35ms re- No 6), has released its first smartphone in sponse time, 90 cd/m² of brightness and 30% Japan. The VA-10J has a 5" display with 1280 NTSC coverage. Customers can choose to x 720 resolution and runs Android 5.0 on a take the display with optically-bonded procap ness tracking wearable with a 1.4" (320 x 106) quad-core 1.2GHz processor, as well as fea- cover glass. LCD display, will be available in the UK on turing 2GB of RAM. The phone costs ¥48,600 Hisense’s G610M smartphone was intro- 15th April. It will cost £140 ($205). ($400). Specifications are identical to duced at MWC, but we missed it on the show Two 15" TFT-LCD display modules from Panasonic’s Eluga U2, so it is very possible floor. Due to be launched in the summer, it is Avnet are now being stocked by MSC that this is an OEM device. a 5" unit with an IPS panel (1280 x 720) pro- Technologies. Both units (AA150PD03 and All prices are ex VAT. tected by Gorilla Glass. A 1.2GHz quad-core AA150PD13) have 1400 x 1050 resolution processor runs Android 4.4. The phone has and are designed for industrial use, as well 4G connectivity and a 3,000mAh battery. as applications in trains and on-board ships. There is 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. They can operate in -30° to 80° temperatures, A worldwide rollout has now begun for with IPS panels providing a 1,000:1 contrast the ‘AKA’ smartphones from LG ratio and 170° viewing angles. They use a 6- (Tamagotchis Arrive in the 21st Century, or 8-bit LVDS interface. The difference be- Thanks to LG). Introduced in Korea at the tween the units is in brightness, which is end of last year, each phone has a ‘personal- 500 cd/m² (AA150PD03) and 1,000 cd/m² ity’, with animated eyes and reactions. (AA150PD13). Both are available now; price Pricing has been announced for the Kairos is on application. smartwatch (Kairos Makes Mechanical

Mobile Display Monitor 29 20 March 2015 REAR PANEL

Paul Butler, sales director at AOC/MMD Taking VR to the next level, Samsung - UK and Ireland, has been recognised as one using its Gear VR - has taken part in the of the region’s top technology executives by world’s first live-streamed child birth in vir- PCR. Butler has worked in the IT channel for tual reality. An Australian couple - Jason and more than 20 years (and, of course, worked Alison Larke - were separated when their for Display Monitor’s publisher, Meko Ltd. - son was born, with Jason at work 2,500 miles Congratulations, Paul!). away from Alison. Samsung set up a 360° camera in the delivery room. Using a Gear VR headset, linked to the camera, Jason could look around the room in real time. You can watch the video yourself (http://tinyurl.com/ mm52k3c), although remember that it con- tains footage of a live birth (around the 4 minute mark). Utopia Computers, John Lewis, Stone and Ebuyer. Entatech dominated the Dis- tribution section, taking three prizes; other winners were Tech Data, VIP Comput- ers, Exertis (two awards) and Westcoast. Microsoft took two Vendor awards, with the rest going to Intel, AOC, Lenovo and TP- And Finally...In a perfect example of 21st Link. Intel was the Grand Prix winner. century Darwinism, an armed man who robbed a Tesco store in the UK was arrested Microvision has said that it has received shortly after the act - because he posted about orders totalling $14.5 million for its Fortune it on Facebook. Global 100 customer - revealed, last week, to be Sony (Sony Agrees Licensing With SmartKem’s tru-FLEX semiconductor plat- Microvision). The company plans to ship form has won the Innovative Product of the these components in the second half of the Year award at the 2015 ESTnet Awards. Pre- year. Fulfillment is expected to continue into sented in Cardiff in early March, the ESTnet 2016. awards celebrate the achievements of elec- tronics and software companies - specifically Korea’s UBI Research is to hold the first those in Wales. OLED Korea Conference - an international event highlighting the present and future The PCR Awards recognise the top brands outlook of OLED technology - on 2nd April. and companies in the UK technology chan- The event will take place at The Korea Sci- nel. 20 awards were handed out in three ence and Technology Centre in Yeoksam- categories - Frontline, Distribution and Ven- Dong, Gangnam-Gu. Flexible OLEDs, OLED dor - as well as the special Grand Prix award. TVs, OLED production and improving LCD Frontline awards went to Overclockers, displays will be discussed. Register for the event at www.ubiresearch.co.kr.

About the publisher...

Meko Ltd is the leading specialist European European market reports, covering desktop market research consultancy and publisher monitors, televisions, public displays and whose topic is Electronic Displays. large area displays. Meko produces the DisplayCast range of Visit www.meko.co.uk for details. www.meko.co.uk

20 March 2015 30 Mobile Display Monitor