news archive
Pratt
Named CFO for TFS Microdisplay Spin-off
Tempe,
Arizona, April 24 - Jack Saltich, CEO and President of
Three-Five Systems, Inc. (TFS), today fulfilled a promise
made at the USDC/Needham Investors Conference in New York on
March 18 by announcing that Wayne A. Pratt has been hired as
CFO for the new, publicly traded company that will be formed
in mid-2003 as a result of the spin-off of TFS's
microdisplay division.
Pratt, 41,
most recently served as Senior Vice President and CFO for
Limelight Networks, a provider of outsourced IP delivery
solutions, where his strategic leadership helped the company
double its revenues.
"As our
new microdisplay company moves forward, Wayne will be
instrumental in shaping the business and financial model for
success," said Saltich. "His accounting and
finance background in the technology industry, combined with
his experience in the capital markets, make Wayne a valuable
addition to the team. I am looking forward to his
contributions toward growing this exciting new
company."
Information: www.threefive.com.
Vitex
Systems Names Malcolm J. Thompson Interim CEO
San Jose,
Calif., April 25 - Vitex Systems Inc. announced today that
Dr. Malcolm J. Thompson, principal of MJT Associates (Palo
Alto, Calif.), has agreed to serve as the company's interim
CEO. Thompson, who currently serves on the boards of Vitex
and Photon Dynamics, as well as the United States Display
Consortium (USDC), takes over from departing CEO Michael
Sullivan.
Commenting on
the transition, Vitex Chairman Ben Maiden explained that the
company is entering a new phase of customer engagements,
business growth, and leadership requirements. "Michael
has been instrumental in establishing the company and
leading it through the early stages of technology
development," said Maiden. "This included a
significant partnership agreement with Samsung SDI earlier
this year."
Vitex is at
an exciting stage in its growth cycle, noted Thompson. The
company is developing an OLED encapsulation solution and
flexible barrier substrate, and expects its products to
reduce display weight, thickness, and cost, and enable
roll-to-roll manufacturing of flexible displays. In order to
help commercialize Vitex's OLED barrier substrate products,
encapsulation processes, and equipment for high-volume
production applications, the company is in the process of
raising additional funding. The two leading corporate
investors, Battelle Memorial Institute and Mitsubishi
Corporation, expect to make a significant follow-on
investment.
Thompson, who
has served on the Vitex board for the past year, has more
than 25 years of industry experience. He has served as CEO
of both Novalux and dpiX, and he was founder and chairman of
the USDC. During his career, he also served as chief
technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Information: www.vitexsys.com.
First
European Sale of Perspecta 3D System
Burlington,
Massachusetts, April 23 - Actuality Systems, Inc. has
announced the first international sale of its Perspecta™
3D System to ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New
Technologies, Energy, and the Environment. The system will
be used as part of the center's applied research and
development work in the 3D imaging of scientific data.
The Perspecta
3D System is a 360-degree spatial display, powered by
Perspecta platform and application software. The system
enables users to render high-resolution spatial images that
can be viewed from any angle as the user moves around the
display. The display itself illuminates a record 100 million
volume pixels, or voxels, within a transparent Lexan™
dome.
Information: www.actuality-systems.com.
Hirakura
Wins Chester F. Carlson Award
Springfield,
Virginia, April 21 - The Society for Imaging Science and
Technology (IS&T) announced today that Koji Hirakura has
won the Chester A. Carlson Award for his pioneering advances
in the architecture of electrophotographic printing systems,
especially the four-drum color-printer concept.
Hirakura is
currently the General Manager of the Corporate Research
& Development Center, and the Chief Engineer for Marking
Technology of the Ricoh Company, Ltd. He also serves as a
director of the Imaging Society of Japan.
The Chester
F. Carlson Award, sponsored by Xerox Corporation's Wilson
Center for Research and Technology, was established to
recognize outstanding work in the science or technology of
electrophotography.
DisplayCheck
Receives USDC Contract for Enhanced Microdisplay Inspection
Optics
Exeter, Rhode
Island, April 14 - DCI Acquisition Corporation (dba
DisplayCheck) today announced it has been awarded a $286,720
contract from the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC), a
public/private partnership chartered with developing the
industry infrastructure needed for next-generation flat
panel displays (FPDs). Under the project, which is a 50/50
cost-share between DisplayCheck and USDC, DisplayCheck will
work toward enhancing the optical performance of its
high-resolution, machine-vision inspection systems for
microdisplays.
Microdisplays
are used in next-generation devices such as rear-projection,
high-definition televisions; and front-projector systems in
applications such as conference room and digital
home-theater projectors; as well as in near-to-eye
applications including virtual-reality goggles and military
head-mounted displays. Commercialization of one microdisplay
technology, liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS), has been
hampered by the need for improvements in defect inspection.
Currently, defects of a few microns in size can be found,
but this needs to be improved since the optical
magnification of projection systems can cause even the
smallest defects to be very noticeable, impacting overall
quality and performance.
"One of
the gating factors impeding adoption of LCOS-based
projection technology is the issue of defect inspection, in
terms of both speed and accuracy," noted Bob Pinnel,
CTO for USDC. "These capability shortfalls impact both
the cost and quality of the displays and must be improved
for the LCOS market to reach maturity. Our contract with DCI
signals USDC's support for projection-display technology and
its belief that they will establish a significant presence
in the marketplace. We are delighted that DCI is applying
its know-how and resources to address this challenge".
The optics
and algorithm enhancements are scheduled to be available in
2003 as a field upgrade to the DisplayCheck MDT-250LH
microdisplay inspection systems.
Information: www.DisplayCheck.com,
www.usdc.org.
NEC-M
Helps Corporate Customers Empty Their Closets
Itasca,
Illinois, April 15 - NEC-Mitsubishi recently signed up
Philadelphia's largest publicly owned bank, Commerce Bank,
to its Total Trade™ monitor replacement and recycling
program. Designed for corporate customers, this customizable
program makes it easy for companies to remove and safely
dispose of their currently deployed working and non-working
monitors as part of an upgrade to NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics
Display's LCD and CRT monitors while lowering procurement
costs and total cost of ownership.
Over the next
year, the program will allow Commerce Bank to recycle
approximately 2400 outdated or non-working displays as part
of an upgrade to new NEC-Mitsubishi monitors. "The idea
behind Total Trade is to provide a hassle-free process for
businesses that want to upgrade their monitor equipment from
start to finish, yet ensure that they are being
environmentally responsible," said Al Giazzon, vice
president of marketing at NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display
of America.
The Total
Trade Program gives Commerce Bank the highest monitor resale
value for working monitors, Giazzon said, and safely
disposes of the non-working monitors in accordance with all
EPA requirements and guidelines, and with state laws.
NEC-Mitsubishi offers some of the lowest disposal and
recycling costs in the industry, a company statement said.
NEC-M of America expects to sell more than one million flat-panel
monitors in 2003, so the Total Trade program provides an
interesting solution for enterprises wrestling with how to
dispose of old monitors when they upgrade.
Information: www.necmitsubishi.com.
Hitachi to
Distribute MicroVue F-LCOS Microdisplays
Dalgety Bay,
Scotland, April 14 - MicroVue Limited announced today the
appointment of Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation (HHT)
as its distributor in Korea and Japan. HHT will work with
MicroVue to address the single-channel, rear-projection
television (RPTV) market and other markets with MicroVue's
SXGA (1280x1024) reflective microdisplays.
MicroVue is
in volume production of high-quality, SXGA ferroelectric
liquid-crystal-on- silicon (F-LCOS) microdisplays. These
fast-switching microdisplays enable OEMS to design low-cost
video-display products using a single-channel,
field-sequential architecture. With a switching time of less
than 70 microseconds, the microdisplay generates 24-bit
color images at a 60-Hz frame rate. Mr. Seki from HHT said,
"We are pleased to be working with MicroVue. The market
demand for single-channel RPTV microdisplay designs has
great potential, and we anticipate significant sales in this
market area."
Mr. Gordon
Woolley, Managing Director of Microvue, said, "This is
an exciting time for MicroVue. HHT's decision to promote and
distribute our product is a positive endorsement of
MicroVue's microdisplay technology in a highly competitive
market."
Information: www.microvue.com.
DENSO and
Bosch Establish Car Navigation JV
Tokyo, April
14 - DENSO Corporation and Robert Bosch GmbH today announced
an agreement to establish a new joint venture to be
headquartered in Kariya City, Aichi, Japan, with an office
in Hildesheim, Germany. The new company, Advanced Driver
Information Technology Corporation, will develop navigation
and multimedia-related components for both parent companies.
In order to adapt to emerging customer needs, the company
will initially focus on the development of several different
items to be used worldwide: navigation system LSIs,
multimedia-compliant software platforms, and map data
formats.
Both DENSO
and Blaupunkt GmbH, a 100-percent-owned subsidiary of Robert
Bosch, will own 50 percent of the new company, with a
capital investment of approximately 200 million yen (US$1.7
million or €1.6 million). Research and development at the
new company will begin in June 2003. "By establishing
this new company, we are combining both DENSO and Blaupunkt
technology to help create a new generation of navigation.
After its creation, we will meet customers' needs for
globalization as well as their need for new navigation
multimedia features," said Mitsuharu Kato, director and
board member for the ITS Division at DENSO. "We see
this as an opportunity to enhance the superiority of our
products, to increase development speed to the growing
market, and save development costs."
The new
company's president will be Shuichi Kosuge (current chief
engineer of ITS Engineering at DENSO); the vice president
will be Michael Bolle (current vice president of R&D at
Robert Bosch). The company is planned to have 40 employees
and sales of US$22.5 million by 2007.
"We
want to bring flat-panel-display production to Europe."
Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, April 8 - At a press conference held here
today at the Hanover Fair, Dr. Hermann Schenk, recently
elected joint chairman for technologies of the German Flat
Panel Display-Forum (DFF), said "We want to bring
flat-panel-display production to Europe. It is not our
intention to compete with Asia producing high volume TFT-LCD
monitors; in fact, we want to expand the technical
innovation basis in Europe." By this means, production
know-how that is indispensable for the further development
of display materials and production processes shall be made
available to domestic suppliers. The main objective of DFF
is the strengthening of the European flat-panel-display (FPD)
industry.
"The
European supply industry for flat-panel displays is one of
the most innovative ones in the world," said Wolfgang
Mildner, DFF joint chairman for a applications.
"Moreover, Europe has numerous flat-panel-display end
users, such as the automotive, telecommunications, and
mechanical engineering industries, and recently the field of
medical applications."
Production is
the missing link in Europe. More than 95 percent of all FPDs
are manufactured in the Far East. The FPD market in 2003
will amount US$38.8 billion, and market researchers predict
a stable growth of up to US$67 billion for the next three
years. Flat-panel-display production in Europe could help to
strengthen the competitiveness of domestic companies, mostly
small and medium sized enterprises, and it could help to
secure their share of the FPD world market.
The DFF
offers its members a variety of services. Quarterly
working-group meetings are an effective networking and
communication platform. "They provide an excellent
opportunity to get in touch with new business partners or
customers," says Wolfgang Mildner. Moreover, DFF
supports its members with up-to-date market and technology
information and offers its own courses for
professional-level further education. DFF organizes joint
exhibition booths on international trade fairs and
conferences, as, for example at the International Display
Manufacturing Expo in Tokyo or the main show of the Society
for Information Display in Baltimore this year. All these
activities help to increase the visibility of the DFF
members.
"During
the last few years, a solid foundation for a strong display
association has been laid in Germany. The next step is to
bring DFF's activities to a European level," said
Schenk, who added that this will be one of the main tasks
for the new joint chairmen. "We want to become the
number one address for the entire European
flat-panel-display industry."
Information:
Dr. Jörg Winkler. Tel: +49 -175 -73-92-160, email: joerg.winkler@vdma.org.
LCD
Lighting Wins Trade-secrets Suit Against Voltarc
Orange,
Connecticut, March 25 - Judge J. Munro of the Superior
Court, Judicial District of New Haven, ruled yesterday that
Voltarc Technologies Inc. (VTI) of Waterbury, Connecticut,
and two of its employees misappropriated trade secrets
belonging to a competitor, LCD Lighting (LCDL) of Orange,
Connecticut. Judge Munro issued an injunction against VTI
prohibiting the company from selling, for a period of two
and a half years, any products whose development came from
technology developed from the misappropriated trade secrets.
A secondary hearing to determine monetary damages and
compensatory claims by LCDL will be scheduled shortly.
The suit
concerned manufacturing, customer, and pricing information
for DU lamps, a type of fluorescent lamp made exclusively by
LCDL and used by Honeywell for backlighting the
liquid-crystal displays used in the cockpit instrumentation
in Boeing 777 aircraft. Honeywell is the only current
customer for these lamps.
VTI hired two
employees, John Andros and Robert Cassidy, away from LCDL in
March of 2002 and employed them in the capacities of Vice
President and Head Engineer. Prior to this, both individuals
had worked at LCDL for years in very similar positions, but
both departed with no notice, LCDL said. In the suit, LCDL
alleged that both individuals took with them proprietary and
confidential documentation, including price and cost lists,
technical drawings and specifications, and customer lists
and contacts.
In testimony
that satisfied the court, a computer forensics expert from
Seattle, David Stenhouse, testified that Andros, in the last
three weeks of his employment at LCDL, had systematically
downloaded company confidential information to a series of
floppy discs. At the end of his last day of employment,
March 8, 2002, Andros then attempted to "wipe" his
computer of all data before he left his office for the last
time, Stenhouse said.
When asked
for his comments on the outcome of the case, Christian
Sauska, the President of LCDL, stated, "All of us here
at LCDL … are happy with the decision handed down by the
court yesterday."
Information: www.lcdl.com.
Nemoptic
Raises €12 Million
Paris,
France, March, 29 - Nemoptic has just completed its third
round of financing for an amount of €12 million with CLPE
(Crédit Lyonnais Private Equity). All previous shareholders
(CDC Ixis, Auriga, SGAM, Ventech, Alven Capital et
Financière de Brienne) have subscribed to this new round of
financing.
The new
resources will allow Nemoptic to increase its bi-stable
BiNem technology's spread among large international liquid
crystal display manufacturers. Nemoptic has already signed a
licensing agreement with Picvue, a Taiwanese company, that
manufactures new Ebook products with the BiNem technology
for the huge Chinese market.
Nemoptic will
also use the new resources to develop and introduce on the
market within the coming months a new generation of color
BiNem displays in partnership with its customers. These new
color displays will be the first color, paper-like,
zero-power displays to be introduced to the worldwide
market, giving the BiNem technology a key competitive
advantage against the latest flat-panel display
technologies, a company statement said.
Information: www.nemoptic.com.
CDT
Announces 11,000-hour Blue Polymer OLED
Cambridge,
U.K., March 27 (Business Wire) - Cambridge Display
Technology (CDT) today announced that it has dramatically
improved the life performance of display devices based on
light-emitting-polymer (LEP) technology, achieving more than
11,000 hours of operation for its blue polymer research
devices.
Over the past
year, CDT has more than tripled the lifetime of its blue
research devices, a company statement said. This advance is
a significant improvement and major step towards the
commercial exploitation of LEP technology in several
full-color, active-matrix applications, such as Internet,
access devices, computer applications, and consumer
electronic products.
CDT made this
advance at its Cambridge, U.K. R&D facilities. The
longer operating life is due to advances in LEP material
formulation, improved deposition processes for the polymer
and other materials, and innovative device structures. The
improvements in processes and structures are directly
transferable to red, green, white, and other polymer
material colors. CDT expects that many of these improvements
will be transferable to full manufacturing processes.
"This
achievement is a direct outcome of CDT's ongoing R&D
activities that cover the full scope of the technology's
development," said Dr. David Fyfe, CEO of CDT. "We
focused on the blue material since it is vital to providing
the full-color capability essential for mainstream display
markets such as television and personal computing, along
with the exploding market for multimedia-enabled cell
phones, PDAs and other mobile products. Even though longer
lifetimes are still needed, these results are a significant
milestone toward the commercialization of the LEP
technology."
Information: www.cdtltd.co.uk.
SSD to
Exhibit Novel FSC LCD
Austin,
Texas, March 28 - Solid State Displays, Inc. (SSD) announced
today that it will be introducing its patent-pending
field-sequential color LCD technology, UltraColor™, at the
DisplaySearch US FPD Conference 2003 to be held March 31 to
April 3 in La Jolla, California.
LCD
manufactures are continuously striving to reduce cost and
improve performance. One approach to reduced cost is the
development of field sequential color (FSC). FSC has held
promise for several years, but none of the proposed
solutions have been commercialized in high volume, a company
statement said. FSC technology permits the elimination of
costly components, mainly the color filter, while providing
better color display performance. SSD believes its FSC
technique is the first viable solution to field
sequential-color LCDs.
SSD's
solution incorporates simple-to-produce light-scattering
LCDs which exhibit the electro-optical properties needed for
a FSC LCD. "The beauty of our invention is that we
offer in a very elegant manner a viable solution for
mass-producible FSC LCD," stated James Lupino, the
company's Vice President of Business Development."
The Company,
which has been in relative stealth mode since its inception
June 2002, now plans to start licensing negotiations with
interested parties. Three patent applications have been
filed covering various embodiments of the technology,
including both direct-view and projection modes. SSD is
privately funded and seeking to raise $1.2 million in
preferred equity in 2003.
Information: jlupino@solidstatedisplays.com.
Dai Nippon
and iFire Agree to Develop Large FPTV Displays
Toronto,
Canada and Tokyo, Japan, March 26 - iFire Technology Inc.
and Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) announced today a
joint development agreement for commercial production of
mid-30-inch screen flat-panel television modules. To prepare
for manufacturing, iFire is expanding its existing
technology collaboration agreement with Sanyo Electric
Company to include development of mid-30-inch flat panel
displays.
DNP will
utilize its primary production line in Kashiwa, Japan for
the front-end manufacturing of iFire's thick-film-dielectric
electroluminescent (TDEL) display technology. The front-end
processes include substrate preparation and fabrication of
the row electrodes and thick-film dielectric layer. The
panels will then be shipped to iFire's facility in Toronto,
Canada, where the back-end processes, such as the deposition
of phosphors, column electrodes, and color correction
layers, as well as electronics assembly, will be completed
by iFire.
"Together
with our partners, we aim to produce a mid-30-inch
monochrome prototype by year end, a mid-30-inch color
display in the first half 2004, and a commercial-ready
product in 2005," Barry M. Heck, President & CEO of
Westaim.
Mr. Takashi
Toida, Director of Corporate Research & Development at
DNP, said, "We will leverage our flat panel core
competencies in manufacturing and our proficiency with glass
substrates as our contribution to this partnership. We
believe our relevant volume manufacturing technologies will
be key factors in the commercialization of the iFire™
display and that our role in manufacturing will grow to be a
successful business for Dai Nippon Printing."
Information: www.ifire.com.
