Can you imagine playing an iPhone game like Supercell’s Clash of Clans on your TV? That day may be arriving this fall.

BlueStacks is going to do what Apple has failed to bring consumers. Using a technology called Looking Glass, BlueStacks is going to enable iOS games to run on televisions. It is doing so through a virtualization technology, taking the Apple games and modifying them so they can run on the Android-based GamePop console that is going on sale this fall.

It will be a remarkable test in the market to see if consumers prefer to play free or 99-cent iPad games on their televisions, rather than pay $400 or so for a game console and $60 per game. Campbell, Calif.-based BlueStacks will make its GamePop service available on its own Android game console arriving this fall. The service could be disruptive to the console market, breaking down walls between the console market and the mobile game market.

“There will always be popular titles which are iOS-only, like Clash of Clans,” said BlueStacks chief technology officer Suman Saraf. “Looking Glass enables these titles to be brought into the living room. Some of the retina iPad games, for example, look spectacular on TV.”

BlueStacks is offering a subscription service and a $130 console with one game controller coming sometime this winter.

“We think gaming is fundamentally changing,” said Rosen Sharma, chief executive of BlueStacks, in an interview with GamesBeat.

The technology doesn’t require any partnership with Apple. BlueStacks can simply go to iOS developers and have them make minor modifications to their games so they can run on the GamePop service, which will be come with a subscription fee of $7 a month. For that price, players will gain access to 500 top mobile games. BlueStacks plans to offer about $200 worth of paid games included for free with GamePop’s console. Since the technology does not use straight emulation, the games run at a good speed.

Among the gamemakers who will try out GamePop is Subatomic, the designer of the popular Fieldrunners tower defense games.

“The capability to bring iOS games to TV is unprecedented,” said Jamie Gotch, the CEO of Subatomic. “At the same time, this is a natural evolution. Mobile games are providing richer graphics and gameplay and heading towards the living room fast.”

The GamePop service could also be available through other devices, not just the GamePop console. BlueStacks is in talks with carriers, TV manufacturers and cable companies to offer its service.

BlueStacks has already upset the Apple cart with its Layercake technology, which takes Android apps and allows them to run on Windows PCs. Layercake has been downloaded more than 10 million times, and it has won distribution at major brands such as Lenovo, MSI, AMD, and Intel.

BlueStacks was launched in 2009 and it received $15 million in funding from Andreessen-Horowitz, Radar Partners, Redpoint, Ignition Partners and Qualcomm. Sharma said he has been working on virtualization technology since 1998. You can preorder the GamePop box at www.gamepop.tv. BlueStacks made the announcement just before the E3 2013 game trade show, but it will not be demoing its box there.

Sharma said that the company virtualizes the platforms on the applications programming interface level. If an app makes a call to a menu item within Apple’s platform, then it goes to an iOS library in order to draw the appropriate menu. Bluestacks intercepts the call and draws the menu instead.

This is possible, Sharma, said because the basic functions on iOS and Android have moved closer together. Both use the Open GL graphics protocol and both ARM-based processors.

The console can be connected via a wired HDMI cable to a TV. It can display games in high-definition resolution, Sharma said.

“For the first time, we now have mobile devices in our hands that have a higher resolution than our TVs,” he said.

The tougher challenge is to get touchscreen games to work properly on the TV. BlueStacks decided that a touch-based controller wouldn’t work as well as an ordinary game console controller. So it is doing the work to convert titles to run on a TV with a controller. That work isn’t too bad, and Sharma said that the top 100 titles on iOS should have no problem running on TVs on BlueStacks’ GamePop.

Another difference is that GamePop games are sold as part of a monthly subscription. If a game has in-app purchases on Apple, then the game has to be modified on the GamePop service so that it uses the proper non-Apple payment system. If Apple had any say in this matter, it would not allow it, as Apple gets its 30 percent cut through the payment systems. However, Sharma pointed out that the games are not actually resident in the Apple iTunes App Store. They are actually residing on the GamePop service, and are thus not subject to Apple’s oversight.

GamePop will not only compete with the PS4 and the Xbox One, it will also compete with Ouya and other Android solutions that bring mobile games to TVs. BlueStacks has 30 employees.

The company was particularly inspired by Japanese carrier KDDI’s subscription mobile app service Au Smart Pass, which gives customers access to hundreds of popular paid apps for just a few bucks a month. In just one year, that service managed to bring in $250 million in revenue for KDDI. GamePop does not plan to sell games on an a la carte basis. That may not be popular with some consumers, but Sharma said his company believes that is the best model.

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Samsung’s latest strategy? Nabbing tiny stakes in companies it relies heavily on.

After grabbing a 5 percent stake in Wacom earlier this year, Samsung has now invested around $112 million in Sharp for a 3.08 percent stake.

Samsung relies heavily on Sharp for the displays in its big-screen televisions and mobile devices, so the deal will strengthen their relationship even further. Sharp also sorely needs the cash, after laying off 10,000 workers and selling three of its plants to Foxconn last year. It could also make Sharp less reliant on Apple, which uses its displays for iPhones and iPads, the Wall Street Journal points out.

The deal is scheduled to be completed on March 28, 2013. About two-thirds of the investment is slated to go towards “introduction of new technology for LCDs with high-definition features,” which likely means the development of higher-resolution LCDs for mobile devices. One third of the investment will go towards “rationalization of manufacturing facilities used in mobile devices,” including displays for tablets and notebooks.

Photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

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Apple may have overestimated just how many display panels (and other components) it needed to meet the iPhone 5′s demand.

The company has reportedly cut its display orders in half for the current quarter, two sources tell the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, Apple has cut orders for other iPhone 5 components.

WSJ’s sources point to weaker than expected demand for the iPhone 5 to explain the order changes. We haven’t heard much about the iPhone 5′s sales since its launch, when it broke 5 million units sold in its first weekend. That was one million units more than the iPhone 4S launch, but it was still below analyst estimates of 6 million units.

The reduced orders may not necessarily mean iPhone 5 sales are worse than Apple expected. Apple may just have misjudged the amount of supplies it needed to keep its iPhone 5 stock in check. But this is definitely the sort of news that Android fans and Apple detractors will lap up.

Apple has faced stiff competition from Samsung over the past year: The Korean company held 31.3 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012, compared to Apple’s 14.6 percent, according to IDC figures. Apple’s smartphone market share reached a high point of 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, but since then it’s been falling steadily as Android’s market influence grows.

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Viewsonic debuted a new line of touchscreen display monitors at the 2013 CES today that are targeted at the next generation of PCs.

The company’s TD 40 Series displays are certified by Microsoft for use on PCs that run the new Windows 8 operating system. The displays come in three different sizes, including a 23-inch model for $599, a 27-inch model for $799, and a massive 32-inch model for $2,499 — (because why not own a TV-sized Windows 8 touch screen, even if you have no commercial application for it, amirite?).

Viewsonic said the 23-inch and 32-inch TD 40 series displays will be available for purchase in February, while the 27-inch model will hit retail shelves in April.

The new displays are a good solution for anyone who’s put a lot of time, money, and effort into their current upgraded Windows 8 PC, but still wants the touchscreen capability that the new OS is built around.

From Viewsonic’s release:

Exceptional interactivity comes standard in the TD 40 Series. With the 10-point projected capacitive touch technology, customers get the best in class touch experience with unparalleled accuracy and speed. The TD 40 family features Professional Grade IPS panels with 1920×1080 full HD resolution and 20,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio for stunning picture and color performance. Market leading connectivity inputs including DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA, along with full USB HID compliance and VESA mount compatibility make this Series the best Windows 8 certified commercial display investment.

But the Windows 8 certified displays isn’t the only new line of monitors Viewsonic announced at CES today.

The hardware maker is also showing off  its new VSD240, a 24-inch version of its Android smart display (aka a big tablet you don’t carry around). The smart display has a 1920 x 1080 resolution screen, a quad-core, 1.7Ghz processer from nVIDIA, a built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam with integrated microphone, integrated speakers, and runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

And for those that want to use it as a PC, the new Viewsonic smart display gives you the option of connecting peripherals (mice, keyboard) via USB ports or Bluetooth. You can also connect a PC or Laptop computer and use it as a traditional display, although I’m not sure why you ever would.

The new display will retail for $499 and be available to North American consumers in April 2013.

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Applied Materials is introducing some mammoth new machines to manufacture the next-generation displays, known as ultra-high definition TVs.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Applied is the world’s largest maker of chip-making equipment and it also makes the machines that are used to craft flat-panel displays. Today, it is announcing new manufacturing tools that process the chemicals needed to create displays with extreme precision.

The company is announcing new physical vapor deposition (PVD) and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition machines that deposit thin layers of chemicals to create displays. The machines can be used to make portable or large-screen TV displays. They can be specifically used to make thin-film transistor (TFT) screens, liquid crystal displays (LCD), and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens.

“The display industry is undergoing one of the most critical technical transitions in the last 20 years –  which is being driven by advances in TFT technology,” said Tom Edman, group vice president and general manager of Applied’s Display Business Group. “Applied Materials has developed a proven portfolio of systems to help our customers make the technical leap to implementing these new films. Customers have reported excellent results with our systems and we already have received multiple orders from major display manufacturers.”

The new system uses rotary cathode technology to deposit a new substance called Igzo, to create the transistors, or basic building blocks, in an electronic screen. The material can overcome “mura effects” that reduce the quality of the display. Screens made with the technology should be more beautiful and affordable. They can deposit films as thin as 1.6 millimeters on sheets of glass.

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Update 10/22/2012 – (8:10 p.m. PST): Samsung is denying that it stopped selling display components to Apple, a company spokesperson told Cnet. The news was originally reported by the Korean Times, who cited an anonymous source familiar with the matter. (Below is VentureBeat’s original story.)

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The Samsung-Apple relationship has gone from bad to worse.

Samsung Display is cutting its ties with Apple, which will no longer use Samsung’s displays in its products, reports the Korea Times.

“We are unable to supply our flat-screens to Apple with huge price discounts. Samsung has already cut our portion of shipments to Apple and next year we will stop shipping displays,” a Samsung source said.

Basically, Apple has such an uncompromising grip over its supply chain that it’s crushing Samsung’s margins. While ending such an arrangement is a sound business move, that Samsung and Apple have become mortal enemies certainly makes the decision a lot easier.

The separation, however, probably won’t affect either company too much. For one, Apple has relied less on Samsung for displays in recent months and has instead been looking to companies like LG and Sharp to pick up the slack.

Samsung Display, too, should be unaffected, as the division has been getting a lot of work from not only Amazon but Samsung’s phone division.

Unsurprisingly, the news also means that Samsung is unlikely to be the company behind the display on the iPad Mini, which Apple is expected to announce this week.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Sony has done a major overhaul of the look and feel of the user interface for the Sony Entertainment Network, the online store that you can access from a PlayStation 3 video game console.

The revamped user interface has full-screen imagery of the entertainment property you’re looking for, like the Resident Evil page above that shows related movies, games, and music, said Michael Aragon, the vice president and general manager of global digital video and music services at Sony, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“When we launched the game service in 2006 and the video service in 2008, the content could be measured in hundreds of titles,” he said. “Now it’s massive amounts of content.

Today, there are 1,600 games, 20,000 pieces of other content, and 100,000 movies and TV shows. With that larger library of media, Sony had to redesign the store so it was more accessible and easier to find new entertainment.

“The U.I. is more rich and graphical than what we have today,” he said. “In the old store, games were in their own silo. Movies were in their own silo. Today, they are part of the same service. Now, you can see all relevant shows like showing Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy movie on the Madden NFL game page.”

Searches are better now; it takes fewer clicks to hunt down titles with long names.

Sony has not yet updated the user interface so that it runs on the PlayStation Vita or other mobile devices or the PC. But Aragon said those things are likely on the road map for the future.

The underlying architecture has been rebuilt with HTML5, the lingua franca for the web, which will be more easily modified in the future, Aragon said.

“We will see changes in months, not years,” he said.

Sony is working on improving things such as predictive text, which makes it easier to search for content. The navigation flows sideways now, like a carousel.

“Our search is much simpler so you don’t have to pound it out on an onscreen QWERTY keyboard,” Aragon said.

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The world has plenty of displays, but it’s too bad we can’t all make use of them. Mersive wants to change that with its Solstice software, which gives people access to better screens than the ones they carry around with them — and then share them.

The problem is that old audio-visual equipment was built for a time when one person wanted to present something on one screen at a time. But in big meetings, that may not be the ideal solution anymore.

Mersive’s Solstice is software installed on a computer (PC laptops with Windows 7 or Mac) that connects to a shared display. The software automatically calibrates different kinds of commodity projectors and displays. By enabling those screens to multitask among users, Solstice enables companies to get more out of their investments in expensive displays.

With Solstice, two or more people can connect their devices to a single projector, TV, video wall, or other display at the same time. Multiple users can share their screens, or share specific windows. You can decide which screen you want to share and which screen you want to keep private. When you have more than one Solstice-enabled display, you can choose which one you want to connect to. You can also federate the displays, getting them to act as if they were a single display, and then move content across them.

Mersive, which is appearing at the DEMO conference today, was founded in 2006 by Christopher Jaynes and Stephen Webb in Lexington, Ky. The company moved to Denver in 2009. The company believes that displays are the final bastion of hardware-constrained infrastructure when it comes to information technology, said Christine Owens, director of marketing. Solstice software can make displays universally accessible to any type of device without a cable connection.

On stage at DEMO in Santa Clara, chief executive Rob Balgley told the audience to imagine a “seamless pixel landscape,” and said that the software will change the way that we collaborate using digital data. “We are turning your mobile device into a media-sharing content and control device,” he explained.

“It seems like it’s very cool technology [but] what’s the use-case here?” Pete Sonsini of venture capital firm, New Enterprise Associates offered as feedback after the presentation. Sonsini was one of the panel of sages at DEMO. The other judges echoed this point. Clay Kellogg of Chartboost asked, “how do you take cool technology and turn that into a thriving business?”

Mersive is in the middle of raising a round of investing. The company has received investments to date from Adena Ventures, Hopewell Ventures, In-Q-Tel and Razor’s Edge Ventures, as well as National Science Foundation (NSF) grant money. Investments to date total several million dollars, but the amount hasn’t been revealed. The company has 14 employees and has several openings.

The company’s executives include Balgley, the chief executive; Christopher Jaynes, the chief technology officer and cofounder; and Stephen Webb, the cofounder and chief scientist. The technical team has been working on the technology for more than six years, and they have been doing research in the general area since 2000.

Mersive is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

The touchscreen revolution in display user interfaces has been going strong since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. Today, it shows no sign of stopping, and the market for touchscreen modules is expected to double from $16 billion in 2012 to $31.9 billion in 2018.

That bullish forecast comes from DisplaySearch, which is holding its Emerging Displays conference today and tomorrow in Santa Clara, Calif. It means that the touchscreen technology market is full of opportunities for hardware and software companies that are part of the huge $200 billion-plus display ecosystem, said Jennifer Colegrove (pictured above), the vice president of display technologies at DisplaySearch, in the opening talk at the event. But the market can be treacherous because of its cycles of overcapacity and commoditization that happen over time.

More than 200 suppliers have entered the market, providing technology in 12 different categories of displays. The aging resistive touchscreen technology still has 97 suppliers, up from 64 in 2009 — all providing screens that can detect touches from any kind of object well but are not really meant for multifinger touches. Projected capacitive screens, which have risen dramatically due to the popularity of multitouch (which uses multiple fingers on a screen), has grown from 27 suppliers in 2009 to 102 in 2012.

As you can probably guess, it’s hard to make money in the display business with so many suppliers. The overall display industry still loses tens of billions of dollars a quarter, particularly due to the saturation of flat-screen TVs, said Jeff Han (pictured at top), founder of Perceptive Pixel, a big-touch-display pioneer. Han’s company was formally acquired by Microsoft a couple of weeks ago to work on new display technologies.

After his talk, Han asked a panel of speakers, “Where is the best place to be to make profits in the industry?”

Colegrove said that the touchscreen module business was $4.3 billion in 2009 and was $11 billion in 2011. But in 2012, there is a 27 percent oversupply for the overall touchscreen module industry. That means there is too much manufacturing capacity compared to demand. So the result is downward pressure on prices for the touchscreen suppliers.

The suppliers include companies such as Corning, which makes the sturdy Gorilla Glass used in displays. Others include “cover lens finishing” suppliers such as Fuji Crystal. Others provide materials such as indium tin oxide glass and film components. And there are makers of touchscreen controller chips such as Atmel, Synaptics, Cypress, EETI, and Elan. The latter companies make chips that are smart enough to deal with noise problems such as a user’s unintentional palm touch on a screen.

All of these suppliers are in search of better large-screen applications of touch. Today, there are 24 major applications for touchscreens. The biggest are smartphones, tablet computers, and laptops.

Colegrove said that projected capacitive technology has probably hit its peak and new technologies will supplant it. Those include putting the sensor for touch on the cover, or a third piece of glass that protects the actual screens that sandwich lighting materials in a liquid crystal display. Other methods include in-cell and on-cell technologies that, like sensor-on-cover, reduce the cost, thickness, and weight of touchscreens.

Han said he sees a big future in “premium experiences” with touch technology, such as high-quality collaboration systems where enterprise workers share documents.

He said Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system coming this fall will enable touchscreens in a big way, allowing desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets to embrace touchscreen technologies that are more precise than in the past. He believes that the future of touch will be a combination of finger-touches on a screen as well as pen touches. You could, for instance, work on a desktop-size display. You could move the position of a virtual paper with your left hand and then draw pictures or trace images using your right hand.

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Sharp revealed today that it will begin shipping new smartphone screens to Apple this month, which are widely expected to end up in the iPhone 5, Reuters reports.

Sharp President Takashi Okuda said simply, “Shipments will start in August,” during a press briefing following the company’s earnings release on Thursday.

Okuda was clearly trying to distract from Sharp’s horrendous earnings, which included a first quarter operating loss of around $1.76 billion and the announcement of 5,000 job cuts by next March. The company now projects a $3.18 billion loss for the fiscal year ending March 2013, up from a previous estimated loss of around $382 million. Sharp was also among the major LCD manufacturers caught in an LCD price fixing scandal, which involved a $114 million antitrust settlement, as well as an additional settlement to Dell and two other companies for around $200 million.

Sharp, not surprisingly, didn’t offer up any further details about its arrangement with Apple. The iPhone 5′s screen is expected to be 4-inches tall (Reuters sources concur) and will use in-cell panel technology to achieve a thinner display. The phone will likely be thinner overall, and will reportedly sport a metal back. ILab Factory recently put together all of the currently available iPhone 5 components to create the realistic-looking mockup above.

It’s rumored that Apple will announce the iPhone 5 along with a smaller iPad on September 12, with shipments set for September 21. That falls in line with the screen shipment schedule Sharp laid out today.

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Seemingly confirming rumors from April, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the next iPhone will sport a thinner display using in-cell technology, which integrates touch sensors directly into the LCD.

Sharp, LG, and Japan Display (a joint company between Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi) are currently manufacturing the new panels for the iPhone 5, sources tell the WSJ.

Not only will the in-cell technology allow for a thinner display, it could lead to a thinner iPhone overall since there will be more room for internal components. The latest rumors point to the iPhone 5 featuring a longer display near 4 inches.

Back in April, DisplaySearch analyst David Hsieh told Taiwan Focus that it makes sense for Apple to adopt the in-cell panels from Japanese suppliers. “Of course, Taiwanese panel makers are also developing this technology, but Japanese suppliers still run faster,” Hsieh said at the DisplaySearch Taiwan Flat Panel Display Conference.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see Apple adopting new display technology — after all, the company pushed mobile forward with the high-resolution “Retina Display” on the iPhone 4 (which, to be clear, Apple didn’t manufacture). The big surprise with this news, if it does turn out to be true, is that Taiwanese news site Digitimes may have actually gotten a big scoop right for once.

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How exactly will Apple fit a larger screen into its next iPhone? If the latest rumor is true, it’s by making the display (and resolution) taller.

Apple is reportedly testing prototype phones with 3.95-inch displays, which are taller, but remain just as wide as the existing iPhone’s screen, 9to5Mac reports. By elongating the screen, the next iPhone could have a resolution much closer to the 16×9 movie format, which means it’ll be even easier to watch widescreen films.

The news follows reports from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters last week practically confirming a 4-inch display in the iPhone 5.

Writes 9to5Mac’s Chuck Remington: “Apple will not just increase the size of the display and leave the current resolution, but will actually be adding pixels to the display. The new iPhone display resolution will be 640 x 1136.  That’s an extra 176 pixels longer of a display.”

With that resolution, the iPhone 5 (or whatever it’s called) should still be able to boast a Retina Display. The site’s sources also say that Apple is testing builds of iOS 6 that add a fifth row of icons to the iPhone’s home screen. Additionally, the next iPhone will reportedly spot the long-rumored smaller dock connector, which should open up more room for internal hardware. 9to5Mac describes it as “between the size of a Micro-USB and Mini-USB connector.”

iPhone 5 mockup via Niilo Autio

It seems like 2012 will become the year when utra-high resolution computer displays become the norm — at least on Apple’s devices.

Following up on Monday’s news about Retina displays (among other upgrades) in new MacBook Pros, 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple is also working on bringing higher-res screens to its new (and still unannounced) MacBook Airs and iMacs.

To be clear, Apple’s current laptops and desktops already feature impressive screen resolutions for their respective sizes — especially when measured against Windows PC competitors. But by bumping up those specs further, Apple’s next machines will be able to make just about anything look better. It won’t be as dramatic as the difference between the iPad 2 and new iPad’s screens, but it will allow Apple to keep pushing the boundaries in screen technology.

Sources tell 9to5Mac that Apple’s next MacBook Airs won’t see a major redesign, but they’ll receive hardware upgrades to run Retina displays smoothly. The new computers will likely run Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors — which are more power efficient than last year’s Core i5 –  and feature improved graphics capabilities. Additionally, the Air’s battery will also be improved to support the higher resolution screen.

While I don’t doubt that Apple has its heart set on bringing Retina displays to all of its machines, the company will likely have a hard time finding suppliers for screens larger than 15 inches. For that reason, I suspect we’ll see Retina displays in the new iMacs long after they hit Apple’s laptops.

Samsung has finished the spin-off of its display company to create Samsung Display, the world’s single-largest maker of LCD displays, the company announced today.

The company announced its intention to spin-off its unprofitable LCD display business in mid-February. Despite $20.1 billion in LCD display sales in 2011, Samsung still took a $665 million loss last year, a move that forced it to spin the company off. By moving its LCD business to the side, Samsung can improve its overall balance sheet and eventually make the move to OLED screens.

Samsung reportedly said it intends to merge Samsung Display and Samsung Mobile Display, the company’s OLED-making arm, on July 1st. While the company will continue to make both LCD and OLED screens, it will shift to OLED as its main focus after the merger of the two businesses.

“We will make Samsung Display a well-respected company through continuous efforts to supply a wide variety of customized products that provide great value to our customers,” said Donggun Park, former head of the Samsung’s LCD business and now CEO of Samsung Display. “By continually staying one step ahead of our competitors, we can make our company the very best in the display market.”

Samsung TV photo: Jenn Deering Davis/Flickr

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We fold our newspapers, bend back our magazines, so why not our e-readers? LG Display has released a new plastic, flexible display that probably won’t let us fold tablets in half, but may bring the bendy-future closer to consumers.

The display, called a plastic electronic paper display (EPD), is six inches tall and supports 1024-by-768 pixels. According to LG, the display “offers users a paper-like reading experience with a plastic substrate that is as slim as cell phone protection film.” It can be bent to a 40 degree angle, is one-third thinner than traditional e-reader displays, and weighs half as much.

LG also alluded to the fact that these plastic displays are cheaper to make than their glass counterparts.

“As EPD gets thinner, lighter, and more durable with the introduction of plastic EPD, E-Books will be able to offer certain unique benefits compared to smart devices and tablets, including reduced eye fatigue and more efficient electricity consumption in addition to lower prices,” LG said in a statement.

The company attempted several drop tests from nearly five-feet off the ground, and found that the screens were more resistant to damage than glass. If you’ve ever dropped a plastic cup versus a glass cup, you can imagine why this would be the case.

The company hopes to ship these screens to manufacturers within the month so they can be released to European consumers at the beginning of next month.

hat tip Engadget

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A seemingly curious investment of $1.6 billion in Sharp by Taiwan’s Hon Hai, which owns Apple-device manufacturer Foxconn, could be a huge indicator that an Apple TV set is on the way.

The deal was originally thought to be worth around $809 million in Sharp stock, or about 10 percent of the Japanese company. But Bloomberg today is reporting that Hon Hai and “related investment companies” will also buy 46.5 percent of Sharp Display Products, a joint venture with Sony, for around $800 million. Hon Hai will also take over 50 percent of LCD production at Sharp’s Sakai, Osako-based plant, where the Japanese firm recently halved its output.

There’s clearly a lot going on here, but according to BusinessWeek’s Bruce Einhorn, it looks like the groundwork is being laid for a future Apple television. He notes that the Sakai plant makes displays for TV sets 55 inches and larger, and that Hon Hai relied on Apple for 38 percent of its revenue last year (which could go up to 50 percent this year, according to Nomura Securities). The company definitely needs the capacity to build TV sets on a large scale if Apple goes that route.

It doesn’t make sense for Hon Hai to jump into bed with troubled Sharp, which expects to lose $3.5 billion for the fiscal year 2011, unless there’s a clear goal in sight. And by all accounts, it looks like that’s the rumored Apple TV set — something we’ve reported is on track for release later this year.

Hon Hai is also in a position to be freewheeling with its investments. The company reported record quarterly earnings today with net income of $1 billion on $35.8 billion in revenue. Executives pointed to Foxconn’s iPhone 4S contracts and its ability to produce more devices without defects. Clearly the controversy about Foxconn worker conditions didn’t hurt the company’s bottom line (though it has led to further investigations by Apple, and increased pay for workers).

Illustration: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

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You’ve seen us gush about the new iPad’s Retina Display, but now the screen tech experts at DisplayMate have run their tests and confirmed that it basically blows everything else away.

“Apple has taken the very good display on the iPad 2 and dramatically improved two of its major weak points: sharpness and color saturation — they are now state-of-the-art,” writes DisplayMate President Dr. Raymond Soneira. “Our lab tests and visual tests agree with Apple’s claim that the new iPad has ‘the best display ever on a mobile device.’”

While most of the tech press has focused on the new iPad’s increased screen resolution, Soneira says the improved color saturation is “equally responsible for its wow factor.” Compared to the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, which display 60 to 64 percent of the standard color gamut, the new iPad hits a “virtually perfect” 99 percent of the color gamut. And because of proper calibration, the new iPad offers vibrant colors that aren’t overly saturated like some OLED displays.

Soneira notes that with some minor calibration, the new iPad’s screen could qualify as a studio reference monitor — a screen so good that you could use it for accurate representations of color. It’s the sort of feature that appeals to photographers and movie directors, who want to make sure that their images look as good as possible.

Of course, that retina display is also contributing to the new iPad running about 10 degrees hotter than previous versions, leading to reports that the tablet has been shutting down. Brings a whole new meaning to “crisp” resolution.

VentureBeat is holding its second annual MobileSummit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of themobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Rumors have been swirling around that Apple‘s iPad 3 will be outfitted with a coveted high-resolution Retina display.

One of these displays for an iPad 3 unit may have made it into hands outside Apple’s supply chain.

MacRumors allegedly has a Retina display (shown on right) that belongs to the iPad 3, which is still in production. The display measures 9.7 inches, which falls in line with the first and second iPad models.

After inspecting it with a microscope, MacRumors determined that the screen has a resolution twice as good as the current 2048 x 1536-pixel resolution seen on the iPad and iPad 2. The resolution was calculated by looking at pixel swatches taken from the iPad 2 and purported iPad 3 screens. Four pixels from the iPad 2 screen fit inside the swatch, whereas 16 pixels from the new display fit into a swatch of the samesize (shown below).

The iPad 3 is rumored to be released on March 7. It’s also thought to sport a faster processor and graphics chip.

It’s hard to hang your hat on many Apple rumors, particularly after the October iPhone 5 miss, when Apple actually launched the iPhone 4S to many Apple fans’ chagrin. However, the idea that the iPad 3 would have a screen upgrade is not a far-fetched assumption.

The companies are accused of colluding to artificially inflate the prices of LFT LCD panel prices for seven years, starting in 1999. This is just the latest sanction in an ongoing series of lawsuits and probes that have brought against the cartel by consumers, state and federal governments, and international organizations since 2006. Of this settlement amount, $501 million will be used to issue partial refunds to consumers in 24 states who purchased products that used the offending panels between 1999 and 2006. The companies are also paying $37 million to government and other public agencies that purchased the panels.

“This price-fixing scheme manipulated the playing field for businesses that abide by the rules, and left consumers to pay artificially higher costs for televisions, computers and other electronics,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

So far, the companies and executives have racked up more than $890 million in fines, according to Reuters. In 2008, LG Display, Sharp and Chunghwa Picture Tubes plead guilty to criminal charges for the price fixing conspiracy and agreed to pay $585 million in fines. According to the Justice Department, the companies held meetings at which they agreed on a fixed price for the panels and exchanged sales information in order to keep the agreement in check.

Under this latest settlement, Samsung would pay the largest amount at $240 million. Sharp would pay $115.5 million, Chimei Innolux $110.3 million, Hitachi $29 million, and HannStar $25.7 million. The total amount could still rise, since some other defendants have not yet agreed to settle.

In addition to paying the latest fines, the companies have agreed to help prosecute other defendants.

The companies are working together with the government-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), which is investing around $2.6 billion in funds from the Japanese government, Reuters reports. The electronics titans are pooling together their display businesses for mobile devices and tablets to better compete against Korean companies like Samsung and LG, which are dominating the display market.

And to be clear, the news doesn’t mean that the companies are giving up on their profit-draining big screen TV businesses (as much as Sony would like that).

With Japan Display, the companies are bringing together their engineering talents to take on Korean rivals, and they won’t have to worry as much about funding, since INCJ is flush with cash from the Japanese government. INCJ will hold 70 percent of shareholder rights in the company, while Hitachi, Sony, and Toshiba will each get 10 percent.

Japan Display is set to launch in the spring of 2012. The company also announced today that it has purchased a domestic factory from Panasonic for an undisclosed sum.

Jeff Han, the CEO of Perceptive Pixel, is one of the pioneers of touchscreen displays, having gone public with his touchscreen display technology a year before Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. Now his company has unveiled an 82-inch multitouch touchscreen display that can recognize both finger touches and a stylus. With it, you can put your hand on the display and write on it with the other hand with a stylus, as if you were writing on a piece of paper.

Han showed off the liquid crystal display (LCD) technology at the Emerging Displays Conference in San Jose, Calif. today and also displayed it last week at the Siggraph computer graphics show.

“It’s like a big iPad,” Han said.

The 82-inch display is a follow-up to a 27-inch “projected capacitive” screen introduced in March. The projected capacitive technology is the most popular today, accounting for more than half the touch display market, according to DisplaySearch, which puts on the Emerging Displays Conference. The projected capacitive touch allows for an unlimited number of finger touches to be detected on the screen at once.

“It lets you communicate in a whole new way, using the writing gestures and touch gestures that are much more natural,” Han said.

The 82-inch screen is six inches thick. The screen is aimed at people who have to make presentations, do creative art work or collaborate with lots of users. It’s ideal for “storyboarding” or brainstorming sessions, and is targeted at Perceptive Pixel’s existing user base in defense agencies, military contractors, energy companies, healthcare, broadcasters and finance.

Perceptive Pixel has optically bonded the touch sensor with the display, making the touch much more responsive. The screen can detect touches at 120 hertz, or fast enough to feel instantaneous, Han said. So there are much fewer problems with latency, or delays after a finger touch, and parallax, where you hit the wrong part of the screen. It can even detect a touch from a fingernail. It is resistant to noise, so it is accurate at detection and isn’t fooled by a palm placed on the glass. The display is likely more responsive than an iPad, though Han hasn’t measured the iPad’s speed. It’s also likely to be far more expensive, perhaps $100,000 or so, when it ships in a month or so.

Han is no stranger to cool displays. Back in 2008, he helped CNN create a “Magic Wall” for the presidential election. That allowed commentators to touch an electronic map of the country and touch a state to call up data on how the election results looked in that state.  Han has been a pioneer of multi-touch technology that is starting to become pervasive as a more intuitive way to control a computer.

Han created the touch-sensitive technology to move computing beyond the stale mouse and track balls. Han said back in 2008 that a lot of three-letter agencies in the military and intelligence communities had adopted it. Time named him one of the top 100 people in 2008.

The technology has been compared to Microsoft’s Surface tabletop computing technology, which also uses multi-touch controls. Microsoft said it invented its Surface technology independently as early as 2004, though Han was the first to show off a multi-touch screen at the TED conference in 2006.

Perceptive Pixel has 50 employees and has raised more than $22 million in two rounds. The company has more than 100 customers and more than 100 patents.

That’s the prediction of Eileen Tanghal, investment director at display-making equipment manufacturer Applied Materials and the keynote speaker at the Emerging Display Technologies Conference today in San Jose, Calif. There is still a fair amount of technology and cost barriers to overcome, but it’s fun to consider where the interactive touchscreens that are popular on smartphones and tablets will go. The seeds for the cool new technologies are already here today.

Tanghal (pictured left) is a corporate venture investor at the $9.5 billion company and she has a fund that makes around $50 million in investments each year. To date, the company has invested $120 million in 33 deals, including six display companies. So Tanghal’s predictions aren’t coming out of thin air.

Tanghal said that the display industry is in its fourth wave of demand. The early liquid-crystal displays took off in digital watches and clocks. But the real first wave began in the 1990s with the emergence of laptops, which was the right form factor where displays could be made for an acceptable cost. That wave drove down prices, increased the market on a massive scale, made the industry profitable and enabled investments in new generations of displays.

The second wave came with thin displays for desktop monitors. The third came with flat-panel TVs, and the fourth came with the rise of smartphones and tablets. During those waves, the LCD display market grew from $1 billion a year to $100 billion a year, with LCD TVs accounting for roughly $45 billion. LCD displays will soon be shipping in the hundreds of millions of units, according to market researcher Display Search, which is running the Emerging Displays conference.

The fifth wave of demand for displays will likely be large interactive signs you can use at retail like the ones pictured in this post. Each wave takes a while to get started, but it lasts for 10 to 15 years. The interactive signs have been seen in movies like Back to the Future 2 and Minority Report.

Verizon Wireless and EyeClick have already created a real interactive display in a store to promote Droid phones. The display uses an LCD screen with a touch interface to allow shoppers to browse for items in a window display. Stores of the future could have these kinds of displays in a big way in something like three to four years, Tanghal said. Intel has also been showing interactive retail kiosks on glass at its Intel Developer Forum conferences and the Consumer Electronics Show in recent years.

As part of the new wave, Tanghal predicted we’ll see portable 3D TV screens that you can fold and put in your pocket, like one proposed by Samsung in 2010 (as pictured). The small prototypes for these displays are made out of active matrix organic light emitting displays (AMOLED). Tanghal believes these displays need to use lower cost backplanes, the backs of display that connect all of the display elements.

The flexible backplanes exist today and are built by companies such as Plextronics, which Applied Materials has invested in. But it could be 10 years before those foldable 3D TV displays come down in cost to be affordable in products, Tanghal said.

Each wave is building. In the U.S., people now own 2.4 TV displays per household, but in emerging markets such as China, the average is still about 0.8. While Americans replace their TVs every eight years, overseas markets see replacements every six years. That creates enough demand to enable the LCD display market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 39 percent through 2014. New kinds of display like organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and E Ink (in the Amazon Kindle) are selling alongside the LCD displays in growing numbers.

“The Kindle made the E Ink display finally take off and cross the chasm,” Tanghal said.

Right now, projected capacitive touch is the biggest piece of the growing touchscreen market. But it won’t be the only one, as there is no perfect display technology, said Mark Hamblin, chief technology officer at Touch Revolution, a display maker.

Check out the video of the future of displays in the Day Made of Glass from Corning. Tanghal said, “We’re trying to make this day happen. I see a future where we’ll use all of these display technologies that we are talking about now.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Two large manufacturers of liquid crystal displays (LCD), Toshiba and Sony, are in talks to combine their LCD operations into a new entity, according to Reuters.

The new entity would overtake Sharp as the largest maker of small and mid-sized LCD panels, which are commonly found in smartphones and tablet computers.

If created, the two companies may seek to sell off up to 80 percent of the new entity to Japanese government-backed investment fund Innovation Network Corp of Japan. Initially, the fund is reported to already be in discussions to invest about 100 billion yen ($1.24 billion).

Sources from Nikkei Business Daily stated that the new entity may focus on mass-producing OEL (organic electroluminescence) panels, which offer higher resolutions than LCD and require lower energy consumption, Reuters reports.

Both companies want to reach a basic agreement this month to form the new entity later this year.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Tablet screens are about to get a whole lot sharper. Samsung today announced a new 10.1-inch display for tablets with an incredibly high resolution. And LG — which builds the iPhone 4′s sharp Retina Display — has some new display technology in the works.

It’s about time. While current display technology works just fine in tablets, having a higher resolution display will certainly improve the tablet experience, especially as displays approach the sharpness of print media. For all of its improvements, the iPad 2′s low-res 1024 by 768 display is still a distraction to me.

Both companies will be showing off their new display tech at SID 2011, a symposium for display technologies, next week in Los Angeles.

Samsung partnered with Nouvoyance for its new 10.1-inch PenTile display, which sports a ridiculously high 2560 by 1600 pixel resolution — a resolution higher than most 24 and 27 inch computer monitors. With so many pixels in a tight amount of space, the display will be able to offer a pixel density of 300 dots per inch, which would make it equivalent with Apple’s “Retina Display” marketing. Better yet, the display will consume 40 percent less power than typical LCD displays, making it perfect for tablets.

LG, meanwhile, will be showing off new display technology for smartphones, tablets and big screen TVs, although it hasn’t listed the specific resolutions. LG hints that the technology in its new panels offers a greater number of pixels than the human eye can recognize, which Apple also touts for its Retina Display.

Via Engadget

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive mobile trends at our fourth annual MobileBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the rise of 4G and how it delivers the promise of true mobile computing. MobileBeat is co-located with our GamesBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Expect to hear the somewhat disturbing term “electrowetting” thrown around over the next few years. Samsung announced yesterday that it completed its buyout of Liquavista, a company focused on next-generation electrowetting display technology, last month.

Electrowetting tech allows for displays that are bright, low-power, flexible, and transparent, making for easy outdoor reading. Samsung says the acquisition will further its position in next-gen display technology, and that it will pioneer the use of electrowetting in e-paper and transparent displays. And since the technology can be manufactured by tweaking LCD production lines, Samsung doesn’t have to invest much to start taking advantage of it.

Liquavista’s technology has a wide variety of uses in mobile devices, including phones, media players, and e-readers. Samsung says that when it comes to e-paper, electrowetting displays are more than 70 times faster than existing e-ink displays, which will allow for color video (something e-ink has struggled to deliver).

Samsung already showed off some flexible and transparent display technology at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, and I’ve seen a large-screen transparent display from the company in action last year. We likely won’t see flexible or transparent displays for retail this year, but I can just imagine how the technology will be implemented over the next few years.

Via Engadget

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Sharp is gearing up to spend around $1.2 billion on expanding its product lines for small and midsize LCD panels, most of which are meant for Apple’s iPhone, Reuters reports.

Apparently, Apple will cover a large portion of the $1.2 billion investment and is going to purchase much of Sharp’s LCD output for the iPhone. Apple is clearly securing more displays in anticipation of high demand of it’s next-generation iPhone. It’s also likely trying to avoid display supply issues like Samsung and other display manufacturers faced this year.

On Monday, Japan’s Nikkei business newspaper reported that Toshiba was making a similarly large investment in LCD production and that Apple would also be benefiting from it. Toshiba ended up denying that Apple would invest in the production of its new factory, but that still leaves the door open for Apple to be the primary buyer of its LCD panels from that plant.

Both Sharp and Toshiba’s plants will focus on midsize displays, in addition to smaller displays for the iPhone, meaning they could also be producing supply for Apple’s iPad. By diversifying its suppliers, Apple is ensuring that issues with one plant won’t kill its ability to make iPhones and iPads completely.

Via Reuters

A few screen issues are being reported: Some users are seeing a flickering display and horizontal lines after waking up their Air from sleep mode or plugging in another display. Others are seeing their screens fade from light to dark after coming out of sleep mode. One temporary fix Apple’s memo offered is to put the computer to sleep again by closing the lid for 10 seconds, and then opening the lid to wake it up.

The memo states that the “issue has been isolated and will be addressed in an upcoming software update.” Hopefully, a software fix is enough to correct the issue — as the video below demonstrates, it seems to be a pretty glaring screen problem for some users. If it’s a hardware issue, Apple will have to issue a recall for its new Macbook Air computers.

Air users are also reporting that their computers are facing system crashes via kernel panics (a term used to describe major system crashes on Mac OSX and Linux machines). Apple’s memo didn’t mention that issue specifically, but a software update could potentially fix it as well.