In March Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Will be participating in 18 Sessions during the Display Week Conference in L.A. in May." The report listed the full 18 sessions Apple was going to host with some of them relating to OLED, micro-LED, projection, optical sensing displays and more.
Display Week 2018 that began on Monday ended today and Apple engineers were there to both participant in delivering the noted specialty sessions and to check out the new wares from the world's great displays suppliers like LG, Japan Display, BOE, Samsung and Tianma.
If you never heard of Tianma, they have invented a high-performance WQHD HDR LCD that was honored with a Best in Show Award this week for best LTPS technology. The chart below shows off the new displays specifications that may end up in a smartphone in Q4 2018.
While Google, Facebook and Amazon reportedly sent 88 company representatives to this week's event, Apple had sent a whopping 369, according to Bloomberg.
Ray Soneira, a display scientist who runs DisplayMate Technologies Corp. told Bloomberg that "It's hard to look around without seeing attendee tags with Apple written on them. Apple is clearly making a statement. Apple is trying to show the display industry that they're a top-tier screen developer now, in addition to being a buyer."
Wei Chen, Apple's VP of Display Engineering attended the conference as he has done for a number of years, meeting and dining with display industry executives throughout the week.
Trade shows are usually a lot of fun and a way for companies to treat their engineers, publication writers, sales people and others to some down time while learning various new wares in the craft. I used to always come back from trade shows pumped up with a suitcase full of brochures and materials to read for months to give me ideas about products, how others were selling their wares and so forth.
For Apple it's about finding the right display technologies for their many future products and shmoozing with executives about what's around the corner. For the iPhone, there are only a few things that make a great device. A super quality display, a sophisticated camera, sensors, materials and batteries. Apple has focused on high quality displays for the iMac a decade ahead of their competition. So it wasn't surprising to hear that they had so many representatives roaming the event for any bit of magic that they could find.
A report by Upload compared new Samsung, JDI and LG panels for VR. They noted that Google and LG had co-developed a new VR Headset display delivering 18.1 megapixels per eye.
The LG panel compares with 1.3 megapixels per eye on the Oculus Rift and 2.2 megapixels per eye on the Vive Pro. The new research is aimed at providing "a visual experience that matches the [Human Visual System] as closely as possible.
Companies also presented a variety of light field display prototypes that are likely years from commercial feasibility. Nevertheless, one day these displays might be used to provide more realistic visuals. Samsung, for example, showed a light field display on a phone in a darkened room. It was said to feature a 5.09 inch display with 1,440 x 2,560 pixels split into 26 different views.
In late April I wrote a report for Patently Mobile covering one of Samsung's Light Field Displays titled "Samsung Invents a Light Field Display that could be applied to TV's, Vehicle Windshield Displays, Smartglasses & more." One of the images from the patent is presented above.
Although not highlighted in any report on the event, Patently Apple covered LG's new MLCD display technology earlier this month.
The Top Ten Trends for Electronic Displays & More
According to Sri Peruvemba, the Chair of Marketing, Society for Information Display, "Exciting technology advances continue to emerge, seemingly nonstop, enabled both by those at the cutting edge of high-tech, and by those who are adapting those developments to make them useful in our everyday world."
The list below reflects Peruvemba's somewhat subjective view of the current top 10 overall tech trends, including the role of displays in making them viable and accessible for consumers."
1. Artificial Intelligence
2. Robotics
3. Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality
4. Electronic Schoolbooks
5. Automotive
6. Writing Surfaces
7. Smart Surfaces
8. Electronic Sinage
9. Wearables, and
10 Ultimate TV
Interestingly Sri Peruvemba though that tablets could emerge as the ultimate TV in the single user setting in the mobile-TV era. Perhaps Apple has that in mind with their upcoming worldwide video business set for the 5G mobile-TV era.
You could check out a brief overview of each category here. You could also check out Apple's display patents here.
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