This week we have a busy issue with plenty of news. I’ve spent the week at the annual SID display technology week in San Jose. We’ll have a substantial report for you next week.
The show was said to be up on attendance and exhibit area compared to last year. The last day was busy, and I made the mistake of leaving my look at the ‘iZone’ until Thursday – a mistake because it shut down on the Wednesday! Fortunately we had a team of five writers at the show so we were able to get it covered.
I’ve often said that sometimes the most important news is whats not at a show, rather than what is. That turned out to be the case this year. At the end of the Investors Conference, I walked through the hall and as I left it, I thought, “How did I miss Samsung?”. Well, it turns out that I didn’t miss them, they missed me, and the show!
It seems that the company had had a large area reserved for its booth and had paid a deposit, but, we hear, senior management in Samsung’s corporate headquarters has decided that marketing money should be spent on promoting finished Samsung products, not components. As a result, the firm pulled out of its booth – estimated at around 4% of the area. The space was re-allocated, so there were no embarasing gaps in the layout.
We heard that a senior executive did come to the show to walk the floor, and, as a result, there is some optimism from SID that Samsung will be back when the venue moves to San Francisco, next year.
There were also some rumblings that, although some Samsung staff sit on SID committees on the Symposium, I heard that there were no papers presented by the company at the event. There was a feeling that if the firm wants to get early sight of papers, it should be prepared to contribute some of its own.
As I have commented before, Samsung made the decision several years ago to only show shipping products as there was a feeling that it was giving away too much information to competitors by showing its development projects. That’s a shame and the attitude doesn’t make the brand look so good. However, it won’t kill Samsung or the show. BOE, CSOT, JDI, AUO, Sharp and, particularly, LG will have been pleased to get the attention of visitors instead!
There were some great displays at the show. Highlights were in flexible and OLED. We saw some great UltraHD panels for mobile phones at around 850 pixels per inch from Tianma and others! JDI showed a very sensitive and high quality in-cell touch system. There were lots of displays of all shapes and sizes for wearables and automotive applications and we even saw an HDR OLED panel for a mobile phone that was producing 1,200 cd/m², although that was in a hotel suite and not on the show floor. At the other extreme, there was a very big 10K BOE panel. Anyway, we’ll bring you the full report next week.
