Samsung Electronics announced it has acquired display technology firm Liquavista BV. Based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Liquavista is a spin-out from the Philips Research Labs that offers a new type of electronic display technology known as electrowetting for applications in mobile devices.
Here’s how that technology works (from the press release):
The electrowetting technology, which operates in transmissive, reflective, transparent and transflective modes, enables the creation of displays with bright, colorful images with dramatically reduced power consumption. Offering more than twice the transmittance of LCD technology and able to operate at low frequencies, displays utilizing electrowetting consume just 10 percent of the battery power of existing display technologies.
Samsung’s idea is to pioneer electrowetting in e-Paper and transparent displays. The response time of the electrowetting displays is said to be more than 70 times faster than that of existing reflective displays, allowing for color videos. In future, the application of the technology is expected to expand to transparent, transmissive and transflective displays.
Finally, as electrowetting can be manufactured by modifying existing LCD production lines, the Korean company will be able to realize significant synergies through the utilization of existing manufacturing capabilities.