WRT (With Respect To) Technology

As smartphones reach new levels of popularity, high smartphone production volumes are driving component shortages. Current demand for active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) displays for smartphones has reached levels that are driving shortages of the displays and are now forcing some phone makers to shift some, or in some cases all, of their smartphone designs to liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

The Korea Herald reports that Pantech will discontinue AMOLED smartphone displays in favor of LCDs as has HTC for some of its smartphone models.  To date, HTC and Pantech have relied on Samsung Mobile Displays as their AMOLED display supplier.  The Korea Herald further reports that Samsung Mobile Display controls 98 percent of the global AM-OLED display market.  AMOLED display shortages are a result in part of parent company Samsung Electronics’ strong smartphone push.   Samsung’s global roll out of their Galaxy S line of smartphones will consume a large quantity of AMOLED displays as Samsung aims to sell 10 million Galaxy S smartphones.

The success of Samsung’s Galaxy S line of smartphones remains to be seen but initial reactions to the phone have been positive.  In contrast to Apple’s iPhone exclusivity arrangement with wireless service provider AT&T in the US, Samsung has announced a broad launch of the Galaxy S line across all four national carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon) and US Cellular.  When I first handled the Galaxy S at the CTIA show in Las Vegas in March 2010, it clearly showed the potential to compete head on with the iPhone.

The Galaxy S Vibrant is available from T-Mobile now and the Verizon Fascinate is expected in September.  The promotional video below from Verizon for the Fascinate emphasizes the key features of the Fascinate.  The hands-on video following, while lacking the punchy soundtrack, provides clear examples of the phone in action.

Promotional video for Samsung Fascinate Galaxy S smartphone for Verizon Wireless

Via YouTube

Samsung Fascinate Hands-on Video

Via MobileBurn.com

If the Galaxy S line of phones is as successful globally as Samsung intends, tight supplies of AMOLED displays may be with us for some time to come.  But this is not a new or unique situation.  The sales success of the Apple iPad since it launched in April 2010 has resulted in tight supplies of the iPad display – an in plane switching (IPS) LCD display manufacture by LG Display.  Although it will take some time for these tight supply situations to resolve as product and manufacturing planners deal with the opportunities presented, additional capacity will come on line.  Until then, consumers will just have to be patient until that new smartphone appears at the door step.

The arguments for efficient solid state lighting are strong as was the interest in LED lighting demonstrated at this years Lightfair trade show.  I find however that there is a good deal of misunderstanding of the manner in which the market for efficient lighting will evolve.  Some of this confusion stems from perceptions about the phase out of the venerable incandescent light bulb.  To add to the confusion, some industry writers present a muddled view of the development of the efficient lighting industry.

In a recent article in EE Times (Ready to bid incandescent bulb goodbye?) the author makes several statements concerning the phase out of incandescents and the deployment of fluorescent and light emitting diode (LED) based solid state lighting that confuse several issues.  First, the author states that “…the argument against incandescents has some technical weaknesses.”  The author’s arguments that follow do not constitute a sound technical comparison of lighting technologies.  The compelling argument against incandescents is simply that they are not nearly as efficient at converting electrical energy into visible light as are both fluorescent and LED lamps.

The article goes on to say “…the so-called waste heat of the incandescent is not actually wasted, but serves to help keep a cool area warm.”  In already warm interior environments the heat delivered by incandescent lighting is often removed through refrigeration (air conditioning) resulting in further energy consumption.  In general, using incandescent lighting as a heating device is not a satisfactory or energy efficient heating solution.

The reason for the widespread acceptance of incandescent lighting has been that incandescent lamps are inexpensive to manufacture and provide lighting that people find attractive.  As many bodies around the world have decided, the eventual elimination of incandescent lighting is one of the low hanging fruit in our efforts to reduce energy consumption and related carbon emissions.

In one section of particularly poorly researched text the author asks: “What about the use of incandescent bulbs in extremely hot or cool consumer applications, such as freezers, ovens and dryers? You can get a temperature-ruggedized incandescent bulb for just a little more than a standard bulb, but I don’t see electronic blubs (sic) (neither fluorescents nor LED) being viable for those situations coming soon.”

This point of the article could not be less well informed.  While oven and dryer lights are not opportunities for saving a great deal of energy, refrigerated cases in grocery stores have utilized fluorescent lighting in preference to incandescent lighting for many years. Since fluorescents are more energy efficient than incandescents they throw off less heat thus requiring less case refrigeration resulting in lower energy costs.  However, fluorescent lamps become less efficient at lower temperatures while LED lamps become more efficient as their temperature falls.  This fact and reduced maintenance costs from longer lived LED lighting have resulted in the recent and fairly widespread adoption of LED lighting for refrigerated cases leading to considerable savings in energy consumption and operating costs.

The article goes on to state “The disposal and recycling of incandescents is pretty straightforward; that’s not so for electronic bulbs.”  This generalization of the properties of “electronic bulbs” is also misleading.  By not calling attention to the individual characteristics of incandescent, fluorescent and LED lamps the article misleads the reader.  While fluorescent lamps contain small amounts of mercury and when disposed of in a landfill will release some mercury, LED lamps are free of mercury.

The article attempts to sum up by stating: “Finally, electronic bulbs–especially fluorescents–require a lot of resources to manufacture, and have a long and complex BOM: ICs, passive components, PCB, packaging, and more. It’s easy but misleading to ignore that reality or pretend it is not a factor to consider in total environmental cost.”

The author of the article would better serve his audience if he reported on data such as the recent comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of incandescent, compact fluorescent (CFL) and LED lamps performed by lighting manufacturer Osram (PDF file)and summarized here.

The Osram LCA takes into account all phases of the raw material, manufacturing, operating, disposal and recycling aspects of the three forms of lighting and provides useful insight into the state of lighting technologies today.  The Osram LCA of the three lamp types concludes that LED and CFL lamps are comparable today in their overall environmental impact, and that both CFLs and LEDs are superior to incandescent lamps.  Osram also makes the case that LEDs have the potential for further improvements in performance (~2x) as compared to mature incandescent and CFL lamp technologies.

Incandescent lamps are today inexpensive to purchase.  However the inefficiency and short life of incandescent lamps result in higher operating costs, higher energy consumption and more environmental impact.  Fluorescent and LED solid state lighting today offer longer life and lower energy consumption than incandescents.  As the price of LED lighting falls and the efficiency of LED lamps increases, solid state lighting will become the preferred lighting technology.  The lighting market evolution will see the phase out of incandescent lamps, and replacement of incandescents with more efficient fluorescent and LED lamps.  As LED lighting design and manufacturing develop and LED lighting competes successfully on price and efficiency, LED lighting will eventually displace fluorescents leading to still lower energy consumption and less environmental pollution.

The mobile phone industry, invigorated by the market success of smart phones, is moving to add still more features to their products.  3D cameras and displays as well as position sensing gyroscopes are likely future additions to phones.  In our analysis we find several technology trends, demos and new product announcements that support the view that smart phones with advanced features are on the way.

Samsung has been demonstrating smart phone size 3D active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) displays for a few years now at industry events.  Now Samsung has announced their SCH-W960 mobile phone with 3.2-inch WVGA (400×240 pixels) 3D AMOLED touchscreen display (photo below).

The 3D AMOLED display is autostereoscopic, meaning that no glasses are required, and can be switched between 2D and 3D modes.

In other news, Sharp has announced they will ship a 3D camera module (photo below) intended for mobile devices.  The 3D camera module is capable of capturing high-definition (720px2) 3D video images (1280×720 pixels).

Sharp will start shipping samples in July, 2010, with mass production of the 3D camera modules later in 2010.  So while consumers may have to wait a while for a 3D-camera-packing mobile phone, they shouldn’t have to wait too long.

Yet another emerging theme for smart phone development is inclusion of a gyroscope that will drive the motion capture and tracking capabilities of smart phones to new levels beyond today’s accelerometer equipped models.

Invensense, Inc. has demonstrated 3-axis gyro plus accelerometer-based motion sensing and processing hardware in a smart phone application.  The addition of the Invensense hardware and software to a smart phone enables accurate gestural input and motion processing capabilities in the phone.  For example, drawing a letter “P” in the air by waving the handset starts the photo viewing application on the phone.  The user can scroll through multiple photos by tilting the phone to the left or right to advance back and forth through the photos.  Tilting the phone fore and aft allows the user to zoom in or out on the photo.  The video below from Invensense provides a good illustration of the capabilities of gyro-sensing input in a smart phone application.

Invensense’s motion sensing solutions have already been widely applied for image stabilization in digital cameras and in gaming including the Nintendo Wii MotionPlus controller accessory and seem to be cost effective and ready for additional applications.

The addition of 3D image capture and display, combined with accurate 3D spatial location sensing using a gyro promises to provide smart phone manufacturers with new ways to differentiate their products and should offer consumers and especially gamers new ways to interact with their handheld devices.

My recent Insight Media Mobile Display Report articles on the 2010 CTIA Wireless Show in Las Vegas covered some pretty interesting developments in mobile device displays and user interfaces.  Some of the demonstrations at the show were pretty “out there” such as NTT Docomo’s eye controlled earphones.  However, still more advanced display and user interfaces are under development.

An especially compelling example of some recent efforts is exemplified by the work of Chris Harrison and his colleagues at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and at Microsoft Research.  Their work entitled “Skinput: Appropriating the Body as an Input Surface” (Note: PDF file) was recently presented at the CHI 2010 Conference (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems).

The Skinput technology uses a novel array of electro-mechanical sensors worn as an armband to resolve the location of finger taps on the arm and hand.  In several proof of concept applications the authors demonstrate the use of the Skinput technology as a computer input device.  In one intriguing application, the authors utilize a picoprojector to display user interface areas on the user’s forearm and hand that can then be touched/tapped to initiate commands.  This form of user interface seems pretty far fetched but the authors have done a good job of developing, evaluating and demonstrating applications of the technology.

To obtain a clearer understanding of Skinput, it’s helpful to look over a few pictures.  The photo below from the authors CHI paper shows the wearable, bio-acoustic sensing array armband.

The integration of the picoprojector with the input sensing armband is illustrated in the photo below.  In this application demonstration the picoprojector is used to display input features on the user’s forearm that are then tapped, detected by the armband sensor, and then processed to enter commands to the computing device.

The authors have demonstrated a variety of projected input modalities including the keypad style example shown in the photo below.

The authors provide a good deal of data in their paper concerning the classification accuracy of their Skinput technology for a variety of input gestures.  The classification accuracy obtained was generally relatively good suggesting that this form of input technology may in fact be usable in future mobile devices.

Although the photos above suggest how the Skinput sensor works, how the sensor can be combined with a picoprojector, and how the combination might be applied in a mobile device application, the video below provides a more descriptive and convincing demonstration of the technology.

As the market importance of mobile devices continues to grow and as designers work to incorporate more capable and attractive display and user interface capabilities in mobile devices, rapidly evolving technologies such as Skinput and picoprojectors will likely be brought into widespread application.

The industry standing of display and input technologies is clearly reflected in the program for this year’s Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week which will include a new market focus conference on “The Future of Touch & Interactivity.”  The SID Market Focus Conference Series at Display Week 2010 will take place on May 26th and 27th at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.

I will be at SID Display Week 2010 in Seattle this month and look forward to seeing you there to hear about and discuss the latest technical and business innovations.  If you would like to meet with WRT Associates at Display Week you can call +1-970-219-8800 or drop us an email.  In the display industry that is currently seeing serious growth in market interest and sales of mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad, and emerging products with advanced user interfaces such as Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal gestural gaming interface, we expect there will be many interesting new developments.

LIGHTFAIR International 2010 in Las Vegas this week (May 10-14) is awash with solid state lighting products.  In fact, the representation of LED lighting at the show is way out of proportion to the presence of LED lighting in the lighting market today.  An informal poll of another attendee suggests that 70 to 80 percent of the exhibits at this year’s LIGHTFAIR showcased LED lighting in a substantive way in one form or another.  Since this prevalence of LED lighting at LIGHTFAIR is entirely out of proportion to the current importance of LED lighting in today’s marketplace, we will be stepping up our efforts to analyze and understand the market penetration and technology trends for solid state lighting.

It will likely take longer than my press room reflections permit to properly address this question.  However, my visit to Toshiba’s large display was very revealing of both industry progress and direction.  The photo below sums up the LIGHTFAIR idea of LEDs.

This photo from the Toshiba booth features the wide range of Toshiba A19 (standard Edison base) LED lamps that Toshiba currently produces intriguingly displayed in the form of an A19 LED lamp (complete with the all important ribbed heatsink).

Even more interesting, but with a caveat from the Toshiba representative and his Japanese translating booth brother not to photograph the “prototype device,” was a lamp that was described as a “100 Watt Class” A19 style lamp with 85 lumen/watt efficacy.  This prototype dimmable lamp with a stated output of 1690 lumens, represents a significant achievement in the performance of a A19 replacement style lamp.  This prototype lamp performance should be compared to the 60 W class LED A19 LED lamps rolling out in response to the US Department of Energy’s “L Prize” competition (PDF file) requirements that are summarized as:

• Efficacy of more than 90 lumens per watt, which exceeds the efficiency of all incandescent and most compact fluorescent sources today, which range from 10 to 60 lumens per watt
• Energy consumption of less than 10 watts as compared to a 60 watt incandescent.
• Output of more than 900 lumens, equivalent to a 60 Watt incandescent light bulb
• Lifetime of more than 25,000 hours, which is 25X greater than a typical incandescent bulb
• Color Rendering Index (CRI) greater than 90, which is a high measure of lighting quality
• Color Temperature between 2700 – 3000 Kelvin, which is “warm” white light comparable to that of incandescent sources

However, as I proceeded to interview the Toshiba booth staff, the Toshiba representative turned the interview around and asked me if I thought the replacement lamp market is an important one.  Well, given the wide spread prevalence of LED A19 and other style replacement lamps (including fluorescent-tube-style LED lamps) at LIGHTFAIR 2010, one would likely conclude that the industry believes that replacement lamps are important.

I replied to the Toshiba representative with my view of the current situation.  I pointed out that consumers are currently facing a transition to more efficient lighting but have an investment in existing fixtures (luminaires).  Thus, I told him that while I believe that Edison base and other style replacement lamps will play an important role for the foreseeable future (5, 10 or 15?? years), the real advantage of solid state lighting will arrive when consumers and the lighting industry adopt purpose-designed solid state lighting systems.  Examples of these emerging more optimized lamp systems were also exhibited at LIGHTFAIR.  Two examples were GE’s Infusion™ and Molex’s Helieon™ LED lamp modules.  Integrated solid state lighting solutions such as these will lead to improved lighting cost of ownership propositions in future and will become widespread as these lighting solutions come to market at appropriate initial purchase price points.

Looking forward, consumers and the lighting industry must get from here to there in the years to come.  This is the challenge going forward and as LIGHTFAIR 2010 shows, the lighting industry is rising to the challenge.

LIGHTFAIR International 2010 will be held May 10 through May 14, 2010 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV.  LIGHTFAIR^® International (LFI) is the world’s largest annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference.  WRT Associates will be attending LIGHTFAIR and will be posting details of our findings at LIGHTFAIR in upcoming News and Analysis posts at this site.

WRT Associates will be focusing on the market introduction of new solid state lighting products including light emitting diode (LED), organic LED (OLED) and plasma lighting solutions.  WRT Associates’ background and interests in solid state lighting solutions arise from their longstanding involvement in the LED and OLED industry as well as WRT Associates’ response to our clients’ growing interests in green, sustainable solutions for their products and businesses.

If you will be attending LIGHTFAIR we would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you at LIGHTFAIR and discuss your interests and needs.  If you will not be attending LIGHTFAIR this year, give us a call (+1-970-219-8800) or drop us an email to discuss our findings from the event.  We will be happy to share our insights and analysis in discussing and addressing your needs.

The recently announced acquisition of BumpTop by Google is just one of many industry moves to consolidate positions driven by players like Apple, Google, HP, and Microsoft.  While HP’s acquisition of Palm brings HP an interesting alternative to their existing iPAQ mobile phone line, the basis for the acquisition is likely based more on the acquisition of the WebOS operating system and Palm’s patent portfolio relating to mobile device user interfaces, especially touch screens.  An immediate casualty of the Palm acquisition may be HP’s Slate tablet PC based on Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS.  Google, through its acquisition of BumpTop and several other recent acquisitions, is also working to strengthen its position.  The video below illustrates the appealing nature of the BumpTop multitouch desktop interface and suggests why Google would snatch up the company to further build its position relative to Apple, HP, Microsoft and others.

This trend to acquire companies with interesting products and patents is of course not new.  In the area of touch screen interfaces one good example is Apple’s 2005 acquisition of FingerWorks.  FingerWorks founded in 1998 developed products and patents incorporating multitouch touch screen user interfaces.  FingerWorks intellectual property acquired by Apple and additional patents by Apple after FingerWorks personnel joined the company have provided Apple with a strong base of innovation on which to launch products including the iPhone and iPad.

While the slowly recovering economy may be in part to credit for the recent up tick in acquisition activity, we expect that strong sales of mobile and tablet computing devices during the preceding economic slump points to the mobile device market as an area of continuing high performance.

For the third consecutive year, WRT Associates are assisting the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA) with the planning and organization of their Green Photonics Forum.  Last year, OIDA’s innovative green photonics forum brought together many of the key players engaged in applying photonics solutions for global sustainability.  The upcoming 3rd annual forum on Green Photonics will provide a stage for an outstanding lineup of experts and leaders involved in defining the technical, business, and government roles that photonics will play in the drive for a more sustainable future.

The goals of the forum are to provide insights and identify specific challenges to overcome in order to accelerate the worldwide adoption of energy-efficient solid-state lighting and renewable solar energy sources.

The 1½-day forum will encompass several topics including:

• Solid state lighting, light sources, and energy efficient displays
• Photovoltaics and the role of solar energy
• Green photonics sensing and manufacturing technologies

The speakers for the 3rd Annual Green Photonics Forum have been invited expressly to explore the growing role of photonics in the sustainability portfolio, from market status and strategies to advanced materials and devices for next-generation products. They will share their knowledge and experiences during the regular sessions and plenary meetings, and during lunch, breaks, and an evening networking reception.  Using last year’s event as a guide, this collaborative environment will be ideal for exchanging ideas, meeting potential business partners, and will lead to many productive discussions.  I will see you there.

CTIA Wireless 2010 held March 22-25 at the Las Vegas Convention Center is a good show to benchmark the state-of-the-art in mobile display applications.  While mobile phones make up a good portion of the show, other mobile device display applications including e-readers, tablet PCs, netbooks, mobile internet devices and more were prominent.

The customary CTIA Wireless keynote addresses held each morning prior to the opening of the exhibit floor were informative and high energy.  Although strong, the keynotes were perhaps not as engaging as April 1, 2008’s address by Richard Branson.  Sir Richard concluded his keynote by inviting audience members who would volunteer for Virgin Galactic’s and Google’s joint project Virgle, to travel to Mars to establish a colony, to join him on-stage.  However, the panel discussion keynote on the third day moderated by CNBC Anchor and Reporter Michelle Caruso-Cabrera with Avatar Director James Cameron, Aneesh Chopra, Obama administration CTO, U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter, made for some eclectic and lively discussion.  Director Cameron remarked that Avatar is the most pirated film ever while Mr. Stone suggested that all one had to do to catch the pirates was to scan internet users for eye patches.

The first day keynotes included an address by J.K. Shin, President, Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. during which he emphasized the themes of Screen, Speed and Content.  The choice of display Screen as his first theme became clearer during Samsung’s “Unpacked” press conference immediately following Mr. Shin’s first day keynote.

Given the wide range of portable products and applications exhibited at CTIA, there were a comparably wide range of input and output technologies for display and user interface control.  The exhibit floor space was perhaps a bit smaller than when I last attended in 2008, but there was no shortage of new product announcements.

Many of the announcements involved advanced displays.  These included Samsung’s roll out of their Galaxy S smart phone with a 4 inch “Super” AMOLED display with an integrated capacitive touch screen – clearly aimed as a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone.

While e-readers were emphasized by only a few exhibitors, Kobo www.kobobooks.com launched new e-reader hardware, the Kobo^TM eReader.  While the Kobo^TM eReader was a relatively conventional E-Ink display based e-reader, the hardware platform is a complement to the family of Kobo eReading service and software offerings that promise to be device neutral, content rich, open and globally based.

On the input device side, Invensense showed their digital 3-axis gyroscope as a partner participant in the Qualcomm booth.  Invensense gyroscope technology is currently employed in a range of consumer electronics products for image stabilization in digital cameras and in the Nintendo Wii game accessory the Wii MotionPlus.  Invensense demonstrated at CTIA a smartphone handset with highly accurate gesture input capability.  Although there were other new display and input device applications at CTIA, one that particularly stood out for its novelty was NTT Docomo’s demonstration of eye-controlled earphones as a new form of user input device.

If you would like to see photos from the show and learn more details about the Mobile Display and User Interface advances that we found at CTIA Wireless 2010, I recommend that you visit Insight Media’s website and subscribe to their Mobile Display Report.

Well it’s only April 1 and we await iPad availability on April 3.  Based on my prior iPad post, I must take the opportunity to correct an error and curb my enthusiasm.  In my prior post citing the Apple iPad, I incorrectly assumed that the Mr. Neil Young that I quoted was in fact the artist, musician and entrepreneur I follow and admire so much.  However, the article referred to Mr. Neil Young, Founder and CEO of gaming company Ngmoco. I can only conclude that we should be very careful (and do our research) about the names we see in print.  Mea culpa.

Nevertheless, the iPad will issue forth Saturday, April 3, and the interest continues to grow.  In some quarters, interest in the iPad is strong, particularly from applications developers and the VCs financing them. The video below captures the VC interest in the upcoming iPad release.

Other iPad observers seem to be taking more of a “wait and see” approach.  David Pogue’s dueling-points-of-view pre-reviews of the iPad in the March 31 New York Times capture the opposing opinions of the importance of the iPad.

We will have to wait for at least this weekend, and likely beyond, to reach a conclusion concerning the importance of the iPad.  Clearly, Steve Jobs has succeeded again in raising Apple’s profile in the consumer electronics world, and has perhaps distracted us from fixating on the features of the expected new version of the iPhone.  Nevertheless, the ecosystem of users, applications developers and content providers that Apple has woven around the iDevice universe are moving forward together to drive Apple to greater heights.

When I think about it, Neil Young is a pretty important content creator himself.  Neil, how will your content play on the iPad…  Neil, are you out there?