The Progress of Portable Displays
Stephen Atwood · Information Display · 2012
The Progress of Portable Displays by Stephen AtwoodThis month, we take a look at the topic of tablets, ranging from eReaders to holographic displays, but I want to start with some observations on the topics of tablets, eReaders, and other portable displays.We asked guest editor Jason Heikenfeld, Associate Professor & Director for the Novel Devices Laboratory at the School of Electronic and Computing Systems at the University of Cincinnati, to help us understand the latest product trends, as well as how the new devices would be used, and what the future looked like for these types of products.Jason assembled a nice lineup of perspectives we are pleased to feature this month.It is easy to be optimistic about this segment of the industry when you see the significant adoption of eReaders, tablets, smartphones, and other similar devices appearing everywhere.I am on an airplane as I write this, and everyone around me is peering into their tablet, smartphone, or eReader.I feel out of date with my traditional laptop computer and 15-in.screen as I click away on an almost full-sized keyboard, counting the precious minutes until that dreaded pop-up flag alerts me to an empty battery.(I might also acknowledge that I feel pretty cramped too and will soon shut this down and grab my Kindle.)My fellow travelers are enjoying state-of-the-art touch screens and almost unending battery life with much more space on their tray tables.There has clearly been a revolution in personal-computing technology.However, as much as it seems that the frontier of personal-computing devices has been conquered, some functionality still appears to be missing.For example, all of the devices I can buy today use fixed, flat, rigid displays.The display dictates the physical outline of the device and displays larger than about 5 in.on the diagonal relegate the device to a bag or purse for transport.The entire time I have been working with ID magazine, we have been publishing articles on flexible displays and trying to keep a balanced view between the hype of "just around the corner" and the pessimism of "that will never happen."We have published numerous articles on the underlying technologies for flexible displays, carried various accounts about the supply chain and manufacturing technologies required, talked at length about the uncountable advantages of a display that can bend or fold, and in some cases noted the loss of early-entry developers who tried and failed to achieve the goal.Most of these perspectives have been positive, but none have demonstrated the proof that rollable or foldable displays are soon to be in our hands in any mass-market application.The wait has been long.This month, we offer another optimistic view in our Frontline Technology feature, "The Future of Displays is Foldable," by author Edzer Huitema from Polymer Vision.Edzer's view is that most of the underlying technology is indeed in place today, with well-understood manufacturing processes and ever-improving substrate materials.The challenge, in part, will be to merge the "foldable" part of the effort with new display technologies such as OLED and electrowetting to move beyond the limited range of performance currently available from electrophoretic.Between now and then -and Edzer's view is that "then" means another 3-5 years -we will need to see if the chicken-and-egg cycle of consumer acceptance can fuel any more product development to spur better volumes and hence generate enough revenue and profit to see any rollable or foldable electrophoretic offerings become mainstream.