Avixa partnered with Technomultimedia to produce Infocomm Brasil from April 2 to 4, 2019, at the TransAmerica Expo Center in São Paulo, Brazil. The Society for Information Display’s (SID’s) Latin American Chapter ran its Latin Display Conference as part of Infocomm Brazil.
Adi Abileah (Vice President for SID’s Pacific and South America Region and Principal of Adi Display Consulting) led off the day-long program with a Display Escola (Display School) that covered basic color science and photometry in the early morning and Tecnologia de Painel (Panel Technology) in the late morning and early afternoon.
Sri Peruvemba (Vice President for SID’s Bay Area Region, CEO of Marketer International, and CMO of CLEARink Displays) followed with “2019 Top 10 Tech Trends for Electronic Displays.” One of his trends was Robotics, which may not seem to have a direct connection to displays. But Peruvemba quickly made the leap by defining self-service kiosks and ATMs as robots that are also display-centric.
Peruvemba noted that many people — not all, but many — prefer dealing with patient, non-judgemental kiosks to people who may not be. (If I were a social scientist, I would be asking what kinds of people prefer dealing with machines rather than other people. But I’m not.) Peruvemba went on to say that “in human-interface applications, the display plays a significant role: large, aesthetically, interactive displays are desired.”
Another trend is electronic schoolbooks, which are larger eBook readers that have color and video capabilities, display technology Peruvemba called ePaper 2.0. “China is taking a leading role in eSchoolbooks — more than 100 regional companies pursuing.”
The program concluded with Ken Werner (yes, this Ken Werner), who is Principal of Nutmeg Consultants and Senior Analyst/Editor for Display Daily. My topic was “Premium TV Screen Technologies: From Fundamentals to Recommendations.” I concluded by saying that most analysts and critics agree that today’s best premium TV sets use OLED screens, but peak white lumiinance for OLED tops out at less than 1000 nits. That’s acceptable now, but content creators are pushing peak white luminance to 4000 nits and beyond. What will OLED do then?
Mammana is Honoured
In his role as SID’s Regional VP, Adi Abileah presented Alaide Pellegrini Mammana with a plaque honoring her for developing a thriving LCD laboratory when she was at the Centro de Pesquisas Renator Archer in Campinas and a professor at the University Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP); organizing a successful series of Ibero-American display conferences that spread display knowledge in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Cuba, and other areas of Latin America; and using her extensive connections to create the Latin American Chapter of SID.
The show floor at InfoComm Brazil looked like a small version of the annual Infocomm in Orlando, Florida, and without the over-the-top sizzle and very large signage displays. One could easily walk the show floor and chat leisurely with vendors in less than two hours.
LED signs with 1.5mm pixel pitch were all over the show floor. Denys Kanashiro, Business Development Manager for Samsung Eletrônica da Amazônia told me that all of Samsung’s LED modules and systems were made in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas and a manufacturing opportunity zone with reduced taxes.
New to me — but that may just be because I haven’t attended the last few Infocomms in the U.S. — was from a company called The LED. The LED had LED modules with a rounded corner, which the company combined with standard rectangular modules to produce some interesting effects (Fig. 1).
At Infocomm Brazil, The LED combined its LED modules with rounded corners and conventional rectangular modules to produce some interesting signage effects. (Photo: Ken Werner) (Click for higher resolution)
If Alaide Mammana invites me to give another talk at Latin Display, I will eagerly accept, as much for the warmth and hospitality of Brazilian colleagues as for the stimulating Brazilian perspective on the display business. – KW
Ken Werner is Principal of Nutmeg Consultants, specializing in the display industry, manufacturing, technology, and applications, including mobile devices, automotive, and television. He consults for attorneys, investment analysts, and companies re-positioning themselves within the display industry or using displays in their products. He is the 2017 recipient of the Society for Information Display’s Lewis and Beatrice Winner Award. You can reach him at [email protected].
