Sharp Amps Up Mobile LCD Displays

Electronics maker Sharp wants to take on OLED displays in mobile devices with bright, sharp, fast, and cheap LCDs.

Electronics maker Sharp has announced it has developed a new class of LCD displays for mobile devices intended to better support moving images—and do so at a price substantially lower than competing OLED display technology.

The new panels (Japanese) will feature a 2,000:1 contrast ratio, 176° viewing angles, QVGA (320 by 240) resolution, and 8 ms response times, making them more than adequate for the needs of the growing mobile video market in cell phones, digital cameras, smartphones, and portable media players. Sharp says the contrast ratio is the world’s highest offered for a 2-inch LCD, and that it intends to keep manufacturing costs for the new LCDs to no more than 130 percent of the cost of standard LCD panels. If Sharp can pull it off, that would make is new LCDs substantially cheaper than competing OLED displays, which currently cost two to three times as much as conventional LCD displays.

Sharp says it will start sampling the new panels by the end of 2007, and hopes to grow the new LCD panels into a ¥100 billion ($836 million) business by early 2009.