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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

In 2010, it is clear that Apple has strongly influenced mobile industry structure, as well as consumers’ expectations of a mobile device and the ecosystem that surrounds it including service providers, handset designers, applications developers, content providers, accessory makers, and more.  As I pointed out in an earlier article, in my view an essential element that makes the iPad different in an important way is that the iPad is the first widely available platform that will give users and developers the opportunity to explore large-size, multi-touch applications.  This device characteristic combined with Apple’s appeal to the mass market, and the built-in user base and developer community created with the iPhone, have enabled Apple, its customers, and developers to invent the future of user interfaces.  Thus I found an article from the March 21 New York Times revealing and supporting my position.  Neil Young co-founder and head of the iPhone gaming studio Ngmoco, said his company was updating several games to accommodate the iPad, including a multiplayer game called Charadium where players draw items and take turns guessing what the picture is.  The game will get new controls and a roomier blank pad to draw on.

“There are so many more places to touch on the screen,” he said. “We can have a lot more fun with it.” ”

Naturally, since the ever green/very durable Mr. Young is one of my all time favorite musicians, song writers, entrepreneurs, I am happy to see that I am in good company with my views of the iPad.

With “so many more places to touch” the iPad will present us all with an opportunity to test our ideas and see where they lead.

For example, DisplaySearch has reported that LED backlight costs for liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs are falling rapidly and they forecast that a white edge-lit LED backlight unit (BLU) for a 40 inch diagonal television currently costs about $120 and will approach $50 by the end of 2013 as shown below.

At the same time, some observers are predicting a potential LED shortage as LED manufacturers operate at very high utilization levels.  For example, Jagdish Rebello senior director and principal analyst for wireless research at iSuppli recently stated: “It is clear that demand is outstripping supply.  With LED market growth forecasted to rise by double-digit percentages for at least the next three years—including 2010—a drastic undersupply situation could occur this year unless additional capacity is brought online to meet the increased demand.”  iSuppli goes on to point out that LED solutions are finding increasing usage in the general illumination market, addressing the needs of residential, commercial and industrial lighting applications. The general illumination market for LEDs is still in its infancy, but will become mainstream during the next two years.

As we consider these press reports and analyze the effects of market expansion on the building LED and solid state lighting industries we extract several important insights.

First, manufacturers of LED materials, equipment, chips and lamps will respond to higher market demand.  LED backlights in LCD televisions and monitors can provide higher display performance with local area dimming, and yield considerably lower power consumption and mercury free sets.  Investment in efficient solid state lighting will be driven by several factors in addition to better displays, including the phase out of inefficient incandescent lighting and moves to eliminate mercury in lighting products.  These green factors help make solid state lighting one of the few bright spots in the current slow world economy.

Finally, the wider use of LEDs in both displays and general lighting is resulting in important synergies and market opportunities.  A very interesting trend is the synergy developing between LED display backlights and SSL luminaire design.  Lighting designers have begun to realize that thin edge-lit LED panels similar in configuration to display backlights are also attractive for general illumination use in the drop ceiling grid lighting typically seen in commercial and industrial installations.

The rapid price decline in white LED edge-lit backlight panels forecast by DisplaySearch will make similar (though not identical) panels attractive for ceiling lighting applications.  A few companies including Lunera and Go Lighting Technologies are now offering (see Lunera offering below) thin edge-lit LED panels in sizes including 2×2 and 2×4 feet sizes to replace conventional fluorescent tube troffers.

As drop ceiling LED luminaires fall in price and increase in efficiency, they will likely be widely sold as long-lived cost effective replacements.  The diffuse extended-area light characteristics of edge-lit LED panels will offer the advantages that have been closely identified with the emerging Organic LED (OLED) lighting technology.  The OLED industry will be closely watching the success of diffuse LED lighting since the availability of cost effective LED edge-lit panels with diffuse area light source characteristics will likely put a ceiling on the price of similar form factor OLED luminaires.  This situation will put added price pressure on OLED lighting designers and may force OLED lighting development to focus on other OLED product attributes including extreme thinness and flexibility.  No matter the choice of lamp technology, lighting consumers will benefit from less polluting more efficient lighting in future.

The iPad is the first widely available platform that will give users and developers the opportunity to explore large size multi-touch applications. Steve Jobs made the point that in developing the iPad, Apple stands on the shoulders of devices like the Kindle. The iPad also stands on the many shoulders, and benefits from the ecosystem, of multi-touch-trained users, content providers, and applications developers that Apple created with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Along with their good industrial design, and excellent hardware and software attributes, Apple has consistently been a leader in providing elegant and effective user interfaces. Apple has steadily incorporated high quality input/output devices (displays, keyboards, mice, touch screens) in its products. In recent years, multi-touch input has been a notable feature of Apple products including MacBook computers, the iPhone, iPod Touch and Magic Mouse. No other device designer has had such wide success with touch interfaces.

Apple’s iPad is a bold extension of the touch interface to a much larger size allowing more evolved one hand and two hand gestural inputs. To give earlier workers their due, there have been prior developers that have demonstrated large scale multi-touch devices. However, Apple’s legions of app developers will likely have a field day working to exploit the interface opportunities.

Other ingredients of the iPad may evolve in future versions (cameras, voice, wireless air interface, etc.) but multi-touch input will likely be the defining feature that determines the success of Apple’s latest offering in the tablet category. The continued evolution and success of the touch interface will be validated, or not, by the iPad. Multi-touch on the iPad will be the product’s breakthrough or breaking point. The app store opens the iPad to experimentation by developers and users. I wonder who could have anticipated SonicMule’s Ocarina app for the iPhone and the music potential that has sprung from it.

By creating a larger size, mass market, touch device with a built-in user base and developer community, Apple has enabled its customers and developers to invent the future of user interfaces.

As a result of the sustained development efforts on OLED technology, the market for OLED lighting and displays is poised to grow from $615 million in 2008 to more than $6700 million in 2014, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 44%.  The OLED report will be of interest to individuals and businesses that are seeking to update their knowledge of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) and answer questions concerning this important emerging technology.

Consumers are eagerly awaiting televisions and mobile phones with brilliant, and low power consumption, OLED displays.  OLED lighting is just now coming to market offering lighting designers and the lighting industry new lighting efficiency and design freedoms.  The OLED report addresses many key questions concerning the OLED industry, markets and technology:

• What barriers must be overcome to bring affordable products with OLED displays to consumers?
• When will these barriers be surmounted?
• When will OLED lighting begin shipping in lighting applications?
• What are these OLED lighting applications?
• What challenges must OLED lighting and displays overcome to reach market and gain market share from incumbent display and lighting products?
• What alternative lighting and display technologies will compete for market share with OLEDs?
• Who are the players in the OLED industry today and what will the competitive landscape look like in 2014?
• What are current OLED display revenues by product application and how will they grow in future?
• When will OLED lighting reach the billion dollar revenue mark?

IntertechPira’s new report, “The Future of OLED Lighting and Displays,” answers these questions about OLEDs and provides the reader with a thorough overview, status and analysis of the OLED industry and markets.

Take a look at a slide presentation or a webinar introducing the new OLED report.  Let us know your thoughts on the evolution of OLED technology and markets.