DESPITE SOME OBVIOUS advantages of its display technology, Pixel Qi has as yet to have a major breakthrough and has so far only mass produced a 10.1-inch screen that has as yet to make it into any retail products. However, things appear to be set to change come next year, as Pixel Qi has announced that they’ve teamed up with Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) for a manufacturing partnership.
Pixel Qi claims that we’ll be seeing three new displays arriving next year from the partnership set to cover various, yet to be announced sizes. The only product announcement so far is a 7-inch model with 1024×600 resolution which should enter mass production in the second quarter of next year. Prototypes of the 7-inch display will be on show at CES 2011 and the 10.1-inch displays will of course continue to be manufactured.
Judging by Pixel Qi’s website, we’d expect smaller displays fit for smartphones during next year as well and the press release promises “innovative LCDs for smartphones, tablets and notebooks” for next year. With the manufacturing help of one of the larger LCD manufacturers in Taiwan, Pixel Qi should be able to bring new products to market quicker and as CPT is currently producing nearly 40 million displays per month, the capacity is there as long as Pixel Qi can find the right customers.
We’re quite surprised that none of the large notebook manufacturers have teamed up with Pixel Qi yet, despite some very advantageous technology on offer. Pixel Qi claims to have shipped close to 3 million screens with its technology, but we suspect most of those are as OLPCs, the quick sales of Notion Ink with Pixel Qi screens not-withstanding. It will be interesting to see what will come of this partnership and hopefully Pixel Qi will be able to take advantage of CPT’s customer base as well and get its products into a wide range of consumer devices during next year.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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