news archive
Screen
Technology Announces £2.5 Million Private Equity funding
Cambridge, UK, November 1 – Screen
Technology Limited today announced it has completed its new
private equity financing, raising £2.5 million for the
company. The company has been funded by Thomas Swan & Co
since 1995. The new lead investor is MTI Partners Limited (Watford, UK) with funding also from TTP Ventures Limited.
In a separate development, the Screen Technology Board
appointed Dr Tony Lowe (immediate past President of SID) as
non-executive director. The funding comes as
Screen Technology is set to execute the next phase of its
strategy for developing very large screen displays using its
patented photoluminescent LCD (PLLCD) technology, prior to
licensing for manufacture.
The funds will be used for the development of
large-screen PLLCD prototypes using seamlessly-tiled LCDs
from existing manufacturing lines. The funds will also
support the company's strategic marketing initiatives, aimed
at establishing medium-term partnerships to accelerate the
transfer of the technology to production.
Screen Technology’s PLLCDs will target scalable
large-screen video displays of 50-inch diagonal or
greater. The technology is based on the 12-inch
prototypes shown at the SID 2000 Exhibition at Long Beach in
May 2000.
Information:
Bob King, CEO. Tel: +44 1223 875500; Fax: +44 1223 870955,
Email: bking@screentech.co.uk.
Sony Takes Minority Position in Candescent
SAN JOSE, California, October 24 — Sony Corporation and
Candescent Technologies Corporation today announced an
agreement to extend their existing partnership. In October
1998, the two companies announced their initial agreement
regarding the joint development of high-voltage
field-emission display (FED) technology for thin, flat-panel
displays. The new agreement extends their joint technology
development partnership until December 2001, under which the
two companies will co-fund these activities.
The agreement provides for an equity investment in
Candescent by Sony, and certain up-front license-related
fees in connection with a license granted to Sony to develop
and manufacture displays based upon Candescent’s FED
technology. The expanded development partnership will
support Candescent as it begins the process of transitioning
its FED technology from development to manufacturing. The
completion of the transaction is subject to approval of the
equity investment by Candescent shareholders and various
other conditions.
"FED display devices could eventually replace the
conventional CRT…. Together with Candescent, we will
continue our efforts to work toward bringing FED technology
to commercialization," said Tadakatsu Hasebe, corporate
executive vice president of Sony Corporation
Upon the completion of this transaction, Sony will become
the first licensee of Candescent’s FED technology.
Information:
Kyle Baker, Senior Director of Marketing, Candescent Corp.
Tel: (408) 360-2606; Email: kyle.baker@candescent.com.
Aki Shimazu, Sony Corporation. Tel: +81-3-5448-2200; Email:
Iashimazu@ccom.sony.co.jp.
Colorado MicroDisplay Raises $35
Million
Boulder, Colorado, Nov. 6 – Colorado MicroDisplay, Inc., a
leading developer of high-resolution microdisplay chipsets,
today announced that the company had raised $35 million in
strategic private equity investments in its fourth round of
funding. GE Equity was the lead investor in the round, and
was joined by Chatterjee Group, EnerTech Capital Partners,
Gruber & McBain Capital Management, Mustang Ventures Fund, Odyssey Capital,
and Polaroid Corporation. CMD's fourth-round financing also
included additional investments by existing shareholders
Intel, Texas Instruments, 3i, and Granite Ventures, LLC.
Proceeds from the investment will further
assist CMD in operations, sales and marketing, and ongoing
product development.
Bill Maw, Vice President of GE Equity, led his company's
investment and has become a member of Colorado
MicroDisplay's Board of Directors.
Information:
Rainer Kuhn, Director of Marketing, Colorado MicroDisplay.
Tel: (303) 544-5133; Email: rkuhn@comicro.com.
Nobel Prize Winner to Give FID Keynote
San Jose, California, November 8 – Arno Penzias –
winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize with Robert Wilson for their
1964 discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation
that provided evidence for the Big Bang model of the birth
of the universe – will give the keynote address at
Stanford Resources' 17th Annual Flat Information Displays
Conference. The conference will be held December 12-14 in
Monterey, California.
The keynote, which has
nothing to do with the Big Bang, is entitled "Beyond the
Visual Bottleneck: Information Displays for the Information
Economy." Penzias, who retired as Vice President and
Chief Scientist at Lucent Bell Laboratories in 1998, is now
a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates. He also
maintains technology advisory positions with Lucent
Technologies and Alien Technology.
In addition to Penzias’ keynote address, the Flat
Information Displays Conference features a roundtable
discussion with seven display industry executives, and
speaker sessions on the following topics: microdisplays,
flat-panel monitors, large-screen display technologies,
liquid-crystal displays, projection displays, and organic
light-emitting diode displays.
Information: www.stanfordresources.com/conf/conf.html.
Kodak Creates OLED Business Unit
Rochester, New York, October 23 – Eastman Kodak Company
today announced the formation of a new business unit based
on its patented OLED technology for consumer electronics. The company also announced the
hiring of semiconductor industry executive Les Polgar to be
president and general manager of the Display business unit,
which is to be based in Walnut Creek, California. He joins
Kodak from Etec Systems Inc., where he was vice president
and general manager of the company's Semiconductor Products Group. A native of Hungary, Polgar
has an MBA from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in
physics from Carnegie Mellon University.
Kodak intends to strengthen its strong position in the
industry developing around display screens made from organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in
such consumer-electronic products as digital cameras, mobile
phones, and car radios. Kodak's OLED technology is currently
available in Pioneer car stereos and Motorola TimePort
phones, and through a licensing agreement between Kodak and
Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd.
Three-Five Announces Beijing Engineering Center
Tempe, Arizona, November 7 – Three-Five Systems,
Inc. today announced the establishment of a full-service
design engineering center in Beijing, China. The newly
developed design center is now functioning and mirrors the
state-of-the-art design center at Three-Five’s
headquarters in Tempe, Arizona.
Located in the company’s existing sales and
manufacturing facility, the Beijing Design Center is staffed
by highly trained Chinese nationals functioning in multiple
engineering disciplines. The entire Chinese staff was
trained by Three-Five’s U.S. design engineering team to
utilize the company’s established design procedures. The
Beijing center is now fully equipped to design complete
display modules and subsystems.
"Three-Five is best known for its engineering
capabilities and design services," remarked Dr. Robert
L. Melcher, Three-Five’s Vice President and Chief
Technology Officer. "The establishment of the Design
Center in Asia allows us to build on this core
competency." Rob Harrison, Three-Five’s Vice
President of Passive LCD Sales commented, "Our plan is
to increase our support and penetration of the burgeoning
domestic Chinese marketplace where we have been successful
with design wins this year."
In the first 10 months of the year, Three-Five secured
five design wins with domestic Chinese companies. Four of
the design wins call for display modules to be developed for
wireless handsets and one win is for a personal digital
assistant (PDA) display.
Information: www.threefive.com.
New Trans-Pacific Company to Make MicroLens™ Backlights
Cleveland, Ohio, October 18 – The SolidState™
lighting division of Lumitex, Inc. (Cleveland, Ohio) has
been combined with production facilities at Shinny
Electronic Technology Corp.,(Shanghai, China) and Shinny
Plastics (Suzhou, China) to form Global Lighting
Technologies. A new 200 thousand square foot production
facility will be built in Taipei, Taiwan.
"With the acquisition of Lumitex’s SolidState™
division, Global Lighting will produce the most efficient
backlights in the world for LCD displays in cell phones,
PDAs, and other small hand-held devices," said
Mang-Shiang Lee, Chairman of Global Lighting. "By
extending the proprietary MicroLens™ technology into
larger sizes, the new factory in Taiwan will produce
backlights for the expanding Asian LCD market," he
said.
The new company will have its R&D, engineering, and
sales offices in Cleveland, Ohio.
Lumitex will continue to develop and market its
fiber-optic backlighting technology for lower-volume
electronics applications from its plants in Cleveland and
Irvine, California. "Our future development will focus
on new forms of light delivery for surgical
instruments," said Peter Broer, Lumitex CEO.
Information: Brad
Lizotte. Tel: (440) 243-8401; Email: info@glthome.com.
The website, at www.glthome.com,
is under construction.
SID Forms New Chapters in India and Singapore/Malaysia
San Jose, California, November 15 – The Society for
Information Display (SID), the non-profit technical society
for the international display community – the
professionals who design, manufacture, and apply devices
such as liquid-crystal displays for notebook computers and
cathode-ray tubes for television sets and desktop monitors
– has formally announced the formation of two new
chapters, one in India and one in Singapore/Malaysia. The
new additions bring the total number of chapters to 26.
Pending elections by the new chapters’ memberships, the
Interim Director of the India Chapter is Dr. K.R. Sarma and
the Interim Director of the Singapore/Malaysia Chapter is
Dr. B. A. Ghani (Crystal Clear Technology of Malaysia), said
Barbara Needham (Screen Technology Limited, Cambridge, UK),
Chair of the SID Chapter Formation Committee.
Founded in 1962, SID began as a mostly North American
society, but most of the membership growth in recent years
has been in Asia, where display manufacturing has been
growing very rapidly, and Europe, where new chapters have
swelled membership. Now, North American membership is also
on the rise, with several vigorous new chapters and new
programs that address the issues of applying and integrating
displays and display subsystems in products, in addition to
the more traditional programs that emphasize the issues
involved in designing and manufacturing the displays
themselves.
The SID Board of Directors formally approved the
establishment of the new chapters at its last meeting on
September 24 in Palm Beach, Florida, based, in part, on
applications from the new chapters demonstrating the
existence of vigorous local display communities and
substantial numbers of people with a strong interest in
joining a local SID chapter.
Information:
Dee Dumont, Executive Director, SID. Tel: (408) 977-1013;
Email: dee@sid.org.
