Interesting Take On the Direction and Value of Mirasol Displays:
informationdisplay.org
Snip follows....
......."(The Hisense phone) shows the commercialization of the technology and where it is headed," said Jim Cathey, vice president of business development, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies Inc. "We didn't come out and announce products. This is a focused and targeted commercialization strategy where we target the handset and handset-accessories markets. We go after those design wins, starting first with the Tier 2 and Tier 3 OEMS, and then Tier 1."
The mirasol display is 50% reflective, meaning it reflects back 50% of the light that hits the screen, Cathey explained, and this allows it to be read in virtually any ambient lighting condition. It also makes the display extremely low power—Cathey claimed that the mirasol uses only 1 milliwatt of power when operated in most ambient lighting conditions, compared to 220-320 milliwatts for displays currently being used in multimedia-enabled handsets, such as liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). Mirasol displays have a similar cost structure to LCDs, he added, and have similar equipment sets and bills of materials, though the mirasol displays are able to remove some components such as color filters and polarizers that are common to LCDs.
For a completely dark environment, the phone comes equipped with a front light with a single LED that does not significantly increase the power consumption (about 30 milliwatts).
QMT thinks the mirasol offers huge benefits for everyone in the handset value chain. Industrial designers don't have to worry about designing phones with bigger batteries. Handset manufacturers can save money by not having to purchase larger batteries. And consumers will benefit from having a phone that can be seen in most lighting conditions, and one that does not to be recharged frequently, a big bonus in emerging markets.
But the segment that QMT is most interested in attracting with its mirasol displays is the wireless carriers, Cathey detailed. A phone that needs to be charged less often is on more frequently, meaning that carriers can cash in on what is termed "available revenue time"—the time when people can be downloading content, be online or send text messages with their phones, for which the carriers can charge a premium.
"People may think it's trivial if the phone isn't on for an hour, but if you have a million teenagers with dual-usage models, that's a billion minutes a day of non-available revenue time," Cathey stated. "That's time that they can't download another ringtone or MP3, or surf the net. "
Cathey continued that QMT attracted a lot of attention from carriers at February's Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona. QMT would like to see the carriers push the handset makers to adopt the mirasol displays.
The next step for mirasol technology is full color. Cathey said that while QMT has not announced its commercialization plans for full-color mirasol displays, he expected "significant" announcements at Display Week 2008 in May. He could not confirm if this indeed was the commercialization of full color mirasol displays, which the company demon-strated for the first time at Display Week 2007.
"The investment that Qualcomm is putting into this is not just for monochrome or bichrome (displays)," he added. "You have to go full color."
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A little Mirasol Vid on Youtube.
youtube.com |
