Palm
It doesn’t take a Mastermind to recognise that Palm is in trouble. It banked that its Palm Pre and Pixi smartphones could compete with Apple and BlackBerry and caught a cold.
Speculation is now about who could step in a buy them with companies such as Dell, HP and Nokia being muted. According to the Reuters news agency, Palm hired bankers last week to explore options for the firm, including a sale of the company.
The big question is why anyone would buy them given that the desirable asset, its webOS operating system, may be its Achilles heel. With many others fighting for space why by a failure irrespective of how good it was once rated. Why not just go Anroid.
In 6 months, Palm's stock has dropped 69%. It has a stock market value of $870m (£563m), but it's shares rose more than 17% on the reports of a possible sale.
Tablets
We now have rumours of a Blackberry Tablet and why not? A number of sources claim that RIM has placed an order with supplier Hon Hai, the company who produces the Kindle screen, for 8.9" displays for use in a tablet. If RIM want to head off corporate deflectors moving to Apple they have to have a tablet offer for that paperless office.
In other tablet news Qualcomm Technologies has been working on a special technology capable of bringing high-quality colour without the need for backlighting or colour filters. The Mirasol is based on a reflective MEMS-based technology, called interferometric modulation (IMOD). The technology uses low amounts of power and is highly reflective. The screen is a 5.7” XGA colour display that should soon enter the ebook and the tablet-PC markets.
Showing posts with label mirasol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mirasol. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Bright Efficient Light – In Colour
Bright screens eat power and this is no more relevant than on the smaller devices such as mobiles. We now read in the New York Times that a number of companies are developing battery conserving technologies in an attempt to save the drain on their limited battery life.
Pixtronix, uses LED bulbs to create their ‘PerfectLight’ image with thousands of tiny shutters. They demonstrated their first prototypes late last year and claim a 75% power consumption saving over a liquid crystal display. It effectively obviates the polarizer impact and colour filters that dramatically reduce LCD and therefore require extra compensating power. Pixtronix expects to now license their technology to display manufacturers.
Qualcomm, MEMS (microelectro-mechanical systems) technology uses the reflective qualities of ambient light. Their new display technology called mirasol is fabricated not on silicon but on glass. They claim the screen works perfectly in full sun and is as low as a milliwat in its consumption. Mirasol will be used in a new waterproof MP3 player from Freestyle Audio and a screen of an MP3 player integrated into a headphone to be sold by Skullcandy.
The E Ink Corporation who supply many of the current black and white family of ereaders is also working on a colour screen that uses ambient light.
We recently wrote about the LG screen developments for notebooks and laptops.
Last year we wrote several times on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen technology which uses organic, or carbon-containing, compounds that emit light when electricity is applied. Sony have launched the world's first OLED TV which is 3 mm thick and consumes 40% percent less power than a comparable LCD, has faster response time, bright colours and a wide viewing angle, but is restricted to a 11” screen.
So many are trying to capture what is a significant market and it will be interesting to watch which get adopted and the key issues that decide who wins and who loses.
Pixtronix, uses LED bulbs to create their ‘PerfectLight’ image with thousands of tiny shutters. They demonstrated their first prototypes late last year and claim a 75% power consumption saving over a liquid crystal display. It effectively obviates the polarizer impact and colour filters that dramatically reduce LCD and therefore require extra compensating power. Pixtronix expects to now license their technology to display manufacturers.
Qualcomm, MEMS (microelectro-mechanical systems) technology uses the reflective qualities of ambient light. Their new display technology called mirasol is fabricated not on silicon but on glass. They claim the screen works perfectly in full sun and is as low as a milliwat in its consumption. Mirasol will be used in a new waterproof MP3 player from Freestyle Audio and a screen of an MP3 player integrated into a headphone to be sold by Skullcandy.
The E Ink Corporation who supply many of the current black and white family of ereaders is also working on a colour screen that uses ambient light.
We recently wrote about the LG screen developments for notebooks and laptops.
Last year we wrote several times on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen technology which uses organic, or carbon-containing, compounds that emit light when electricity is applied. Sony have launched the world's first OLED TV which is 3 mm thick and consumes 40% percent less power than a comparable LCD, has faster response time, bright colours and a wide viewing angle, but is restricted to a 11” screen.
So many are trying to capture what is a significant market and it will be interesting to watch which get adopted and the key issues that decide who wins and who loses.
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