Sharp Makes Low-Power LCDs for Tablets and Smartphones

With low power consumption gaining in importance quickly, it make sense that researchers would try to come up with better solutions for every mobile device out there, and Sharp seems to have come up with something for the mobile market.

The main reason Intel has not been able to ever really challenge ARM on the mobile market, until recently (though it remains to be seen), is because of power consumption issues.

Basically, x86 chips use much more energy than those on the ARM architecture, although, true enough, their performance was far higher.

Then again, with both of these gaps narrowing, since AMD and Intel both want the other's turf, the relevance of how efficient other components are has risen.

As such, Sharp will most likely get more attention for its recent LCD milestone than it otherwise would have.

Apparently, the company has created a new type of liquid crystal displays that utilize InGaZnO material in their construction. More specifically, the thin-film transistor uses this new oxide semiconductor.

Being the first LCDs to use this material, they are supposed to be much more power efficient than anything on the current LCD market.

Other features of the displays is that the transistor is downsized as the light transmittance of each pixel is boosted.

Sharp plans to make small and medium LCD panels at the Kameyama Plant 2 using 8th generation glass substrates.

Production should commence sometime this year, meaning that it will take several quarters for smartphones and tablets to get one of these panels.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with new and promising technologies, it is impossible to tell exactly when some actual progress will be made in their adoption.

Now all that remains is for some milestone or another to make LCDs thinner and mobile devices really can become thin enough to be lost between the pages of a book (provided paper books aren't completely made obsolete by e-books by then).