CAMPBELL, Calif., May 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a piece written by Sri Peruvemba, CEO of Marketer International and Head of Marketing for the Society for Information Display.
The global display industry continues to grow, with new technologies enabling a host of emerging products and applications. To help you keep track of what's happening and what to keep an eye on in the world of displays, here's a list of the current top 10 trends in display technology.
-- Wearables The most high-profile recent entry to the burgeoning wearable
market, smart watches will continue to be a hot topic, as more and more
companies are beginning to release their own version of this do-it-all
timepiece. But wearables comprise more than watches, fitness bands, and,
yes, smart glass. Wearable displays for virtual and augmented reality
(VR, AR) experiences are on the cusp of being truly ready for broad
market availability. All of these applications have to convey large
amounts of information on small displays, which must deliver high
brightness and resolution with very low power consumption. Thus, organic
LED (OLED) and ePaper displays are gaining market share because they're
thinner and lighter, with better color performance; for this category,
in particular, flexible OLEDs have a bright future (more on flexible
displays below).
-- Curved Screens Representing another area of greatly heightened public
interest over the past year or so, curved screens have three primary
applications:
-- TVs - With more of the screen directed toward the focal point, where
the viewer tends to sit, curved screens create a better and more
satisfying viewing experience.
-- Smartphones - Curved screens not only make the phone more
aesthetically pleasing, but they also create new opportunities for
viewing information visible on the curved edge or side of the
screen.
-- Dashboards - Beautiful curved displays inserted into car dashboards
will be highly functional and greatly improve driver usability,
eliminating the cluster of jarring right angles that create
limitations for previous incarnations of rectangular displays.
-- Quantum Dots According to market research firm IDTechEx, "Quantum
dot-enhanced LCD panels are set to capture a 14-percent share of the TV
market by 2020." Quantum dots (QDs) are light-emitting semiconductor
nanocrystals that can convert light from one wavelength to other
specific wavelengths, creating intense red, green and blue colors. The
dots can support large LCDs, making them good candidates for TVscreens
and other applications. Backlit QD-LCDs are garnering interest and
investment because they greatly improve image quality while costing less
than OLED, as the LCD fabs are already in place, many of them fully
depreciated. Pioneering companies in this space include Nanosys, which
embeds quantum dots into sheets, Quantum Materials, which prints the
dots on film, and QD Vision, whose technology routes light from blue
LEDs through tubes filled with red and green quantum dots to create pure
white light.
-- More Pixels/Enhanced Readability Large-screen TVs with UHD/4K
technology are starting to hit the market in greater numbers, to cater
to buyers' interest and desire for a range of price points. In addition,
there is beginning to be a push for video of the same high quality to be
viewable on tablets, wearables and other smaller screens. This will
require smaller displays that can accommodate very high-quality content,
creating opportunities for companies that can find ways to cram in more
pixels per unit of real estate. In the industrial and specialty display
markets, there is great interest in 8K pixel resolution. Concurrently,
enhanced readability will become an important trend. A number of
disparate professions have been using very high-resolution displays for
some time, e.g., air traffic control (ATC) and digital x-rays. While
both are literally life-or-death applications, their requirements for
readability are very different. In the medical space, where the surgeon
needs at-a-glance readability of the patient's information, the display
is regularly scanned for pixel defects to ensure all are working
perfectly, as many of these displays are monochrome. For ATC, the
requirement is large displays with high resolution - the controllers
need to be able to see everything easily and study it carefully to make
informed decisions. Mainstream applications are now also requiring
better displays with higher resolution at both ends of the pixel
spectrum, which will benefit these more niche users, as manufacturing
efficiencies will deliver even better products at a lower cost.
-- Better Image Quality Not everyone thinks more pixels are the only way to
enhance the user experience. For example, Pixelworks offers chipsets and
algorithms designed to optimize the quality of any display. The
technology is predicated on the fact that, due to increased pixel
density, the human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels. This means
that images are more lifelike than ever and that any artifact can
intrude on the viewing experience. Dolby's HDR (High Dynamic Range)
technologies also deliver greater luminosity, along with better contrast
and more saturated colors.
-- Immersive Virtual Reality Why can't computing feel completely natural?
Magic Leap, a company in the VR field, has posed this question, and
rather than taking away from the human experience, immersive VR is meant
to be a blend between the digital and real world. Magic Leap's approach,
is a biometric platform for experiencing the digital world that respects
how humans naturally function. Oculus (now part of Facebook) is another
company that has been working on immersive VR, most famously for its
Oculus Rift product that creates a stereoscopic 3D view and has
ultra-low-latency 360-degree head tracking - factoring real-life head
and eye movement into how users interact with the technology.
-- Flexible & Foldable/ Rollable Displays IDTechEx foresees the market for
plastic and flexible AMOLED displays will reach $16 billion by 2020.
We've already begun to see clothing with embedded displays come to
market, as technology has been developed to adapt itself to the rigors
of fabric wear and maintenance. The eventual goal is to enable users to
fold down or roll up virtually any mobile device and put it in a pocket.
This creates a huge opportunity, as mentioned earlier, for flexible
OLEDs. Samsung and LG Display are creating flexible OLEDs that are
literally changing the shape and capabilities of their latest smartphone
offerings. Companies like E Ink and Polyera are constructing flexible
ePaper displays that are aimed at wearable devices. Glass is still the
most popular substrate for displays, but - as noted above - plastic is
starting to gain ground.
-- Secondary Displays An interesting emerging trend is to have a secondary
display on mobile phones. While we tend to focus our attention on a
phone's primary display, there is a great deal of unused real estate on
the back of a phone. This space is starting to be utilized for some
innovative new always-on secondary displays based on low-power display
technologies, which allow the user to access information on the phone's
existing footprint without draining the battery. Some unique solutions
currently coming to market include YotaPhone, an Android phone with
full-touch capacitive screens on the front (AMOLED) and back, both
utilizing Corning Gorilla glass; popSLATE, an iPhone 6 cover that
converts the back of the phone into a shatterproof e-paper screen with
pushbutton slideshow mode; and the Tegware Bagel, an iPhone 6 case with
an integrated e-writer that enables using the included stylus to jot
notes or sketches right on the phone. The latter offering also falls
into our next trend area - displays for writing.
-- Displays for Writing While many of us run our lives using our
smartphones, we still tend to turn to pen and paper for taking notes,
writing reminders to ourselves, doodling ideas, etc. - it just comes
naturally. The next time you are in a meeting, notice how many people
brought paper notebooks and pens. Studies have shown that we tend to
retain information better when we have used the connection from brain to
hand to write it down than when we simply enter, or scan, it into our
phones. Displays for writing are thus making a comeback. Many tablets
now have a pen input feature, and for smartphones, some new options are
being developed, such as the previously mentioned Tegware Bagel.
Samsung's Galaxy Note incorporates pen writing ability and is quite
popular. This category also creates new opportunities for plastic
displays since plastic tends to win out over glass for e-writing
preference. Kent Displays manufactures the Boogie Board line of
e-writers, which are available in a variety of sizes and styles. If
you're given to copious note taking, the argument for such a solution is
compelling: Kent Displays claims one 8.5 LCD eWriter can save over
50,000 sheets of paper. This would also allow schools to save on
resources while still teaching students handwriting (another strong
argument in its favor).
-- Haptic Enabled Displays Haptic technology is tactile-feedback technology
that recreates the sense of touch by applying force, vibration or motion
to the user. This feature enhances the keyboard typing experience on a
display and creates a more immersive experience in gaming applications,
etc. Companies that are already bringing haptic displays to market
include Immersion, whose haptic solutions are being used in mobile,
gaming, automotive, medical and consumer products, and Novasentis, which
is focused on integrating its electro-mechanical polymer (EMP) actuator
technology into wearable devices.
As you may have noticed, what's exciting about many of these trends is not just how they'll be used, but how they work - it's the ingredients that make these emerging technologies viable and marketable.
To see demos of many of these fascinating technologies and applications and to hear firsthand from the brightest minds in the display industry how they're making new display products a reality, plan to attend the 52(nd) annual Display Week Conference, May 31 - June 5, at the San Jose Convention Center.
We look forward to seeing you at Display Week - where imagination is on display.
SOURCE Society for Information Display
Society for Information Display
CONTACT: Marie Labrie/Carolyn Entress, for SID, Phone: (650) 968-8900, E-mail: DisplayWeekPR@mcapr.com