The Society for Information Display Conference, Symposium and Exposition filled the North Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center last week with an attendance that broke the previous record established at the 2001 San Jose show. This year, 8,500 attendees converged from the Americas, Europe and Asia to discuss and show off the latest display technology advancements, according to Michael Morgenthal, media contact for the group. The previous record from the San Jose conference was 7,900 he said.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
of Projection Monthly

This year’s technical symposium also hit an attendance record - a cool 3,000 participants eager to hear top-level business executives, researcher scientists and market analysts share their latest display products, market trends and technology breakthroughs. The program schedule was grueling, covering display topics from mainline to exotic in twelve technology tracks over the course of four days.

Not surprisingly, LCDs dominated the program, primarily on the basis of versatility, since versions of the technology are used in all markets from small cell-phone displays to a 100-inch behemoth shown in the LG.Philips LCD (LPL) booth. Bock Kwon (VP at LPL) used this theme of LCD versatility to kick off his keynote covering the evolution of the LCD industry and where it is going. He showed off the company’s new P7 manufacturing line, which can produce 42-inch LCDs 8-up, directly challenging the PDP market’s sweet spot.

Sessions were rife with LCD technology display improvements, particularly focused on motion artifacts and frame-insertion schemes, with two sessions dedicated to these issues. Backlights were also a special focus, with one session dedicated to LED illumination for LCDs.

OLEDs were also given their due with over ten sessions dedicated to the technology and five additional sessions looking at OLED manufacturing. In fact one of our previous Display Dailies from the show focused on a particularly exciting breakthrough in OLED solution processing announced by DuPont, which is projected to enable a 60% cost savings of a 15.4" OLED panel over traditional LCD panels, according to the company.

Other sessions focussed on PDP’s, 3D displays, projection systems of all types and innovative displays and manufacturing.

The first day of SID was dedicated to the Business Conference, where the the members of the market research troika - DisplaySearch, iSuppli and DisplayBank - provided forecasts of the display market. Ross Young (DisplaySearch) gave a comprehensive look at the Flat TV market and Sweta Dash (iSuppli) focused on the impact of price erosion on Flat TVs. Peter Kwon of DisplayBank focused on the supply side, looking at the current panel glut and its impact going forward.

The expo featured some rather cool display technology and offered display manufacturers a venue to show off the latest improvements. Notably absent from the show floor this year (and last) was the Toshiba / Cannon SED technology, but some surprises included the remarkable progress in 3D displays from Toshiba and Philips, a 100-inch LCD from LPL, dual-sided OLEDs with images viewable from both sides from Fraunhofer IMPS and Samsung, a WVGA (800×400) 7-inch panel from Samsung - the first a-Si single-chip TFT-LCD panel in this size according to the company - Liquavista’s electro-wetting displays, and Qualcomm’s iteration of the iMoD technology it acquired from Iridigm, which uses "God’s colors" (my term) by filtering all but the desired wavelengths from ambient light using a MEMS device. The technology is bi-stable, readable in sunlight and consumes very low power, something Qualcomm needs if it is to be successful in selling streaming (always-on) video/TV to cell phones.

It was a full week at SID, and you will be able to read much more about it if you’re a subscriber to Insight Media’s Mobile Display Report, HD Retailer or Projection Monthly. (My apologies for the shameless promo here.)