Japanese companies push display products
Sanyo Electric has adopted a OnonrubbingO vertical light-distribution technology for low-temperature polysilicon TFT-LCDs to improve image quality and achieve a viewing angle comparable to that of conventional CRTs. This technology, Survival (Super Ranged Viewing by Vertical Alignment), is expected to be used in the mass production of 4-in. polysilicon TFT-LCDs by this summer. Vertical and horizontal visual angles of 160? have been achieved by using new OnegativeO liquid-crystal materials. In addition, because a black matrix is not needed, a high-aperture ratio of 75% and a high-contrast ratio of 500:1 have been obtained. . . . Sanyo Electric has also released its Maltese DSC-X1, a 2-in. TFT-LCD digital still camera, which presents an XGA 810,000-pixel CCD image on a low temperature poly-Si TFT-LCD monitor.
Fujitsu has added the VL-1500T 15-in. TFT color LCD to its VL Series of LCDs for personal computers. Key product features include vertical and horizontal viewing angles of 160?, response speed of 25 ms, and a contrast ratio of 300:1. The display has a 38-cm diagonal, which is comparable to that of similar CRTs, and is XGA compatible (1024 768 dots) with a maximum of 16 million colors. By using an image correction LSI chip, it can display both VGA (640 480-dot) and SVGA (800 600-dot) resolutions in enlarged mode.
Sony and Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd. have jointly established ST Liquid Crystal Display Corp., which is slated to manufacture new LCD panels. The new company is slated to begin production operations in early 1999. Initial plans call for an LCD production of 6000 units per month, with a monthly production of 15,000 units in the spring of 2000.
A survey of Japanese liquid-crystal-display sales reveals that business growth is expected to rise markedly from the previous year by 130% to 200%. . . . NEC sales in FY1997 were US$1.02 billion, an increase of 130% compared to last year?with plasma-display panels estimated to post a huge growth from US$1.6 million to US$31.3 million. . . . LCD sales for Hitachi Ltd. were US$900 million, an increase of 128% over last year. . . . Sales for Fujitsu were US$129 million for LCDs and US$62.5 million for PDPs. . . . Mitsubishi Electric Corp. had sales of US$391 million, a 192% increase over last year.
Seiko-Epson has started sample shipments of its super passive LCD modules for portable information equipment using a passive matrix method. The modules include the TCM-A0954 Series of 96 32 pixels, the EG8504 Series of 320 240 pixels, the EG7014 Series of 640 200 pixels, and the EG7502 Series of 320 200 pixels.
