One of the most intriguing new technologies is Liquavista, a spinoff from Philips launched in April, which is developing products using electrowetting technology for portable displays. First shown at SID 2004 by Philips, electrowetting technology offers great potential for mobile displays such as cellphones, MP3 players and cameras, because the displays are extremely bright and energy-efficient. Electrowetting makes use of the natural forces intrinsic to an oil and water interface and methods developed for the manipulation of these forces.

Liquavista claims that the total improvement of the color conversion factor by a factor of six in a three-layer display compared to LCD renders a paper-like optical performance. As a result, the reflective electrowetting display can be used under most conditions in which people can use paper, ranging from very dimly-lit rooms to bright day-light conditions.

Qualcomm will exhibit its iMoD MEMS-based building blocks that enable a display to be viewed almost like printed paper, with no constraint on lighting conditions. Betting on emerging markets, Qualcomm Inc. plans to build out its MediaFLO infrastructure to offer mobile TV on cellphones by year's end.

Also at SID, LG.Philips LCD will showcase what it claims is the world's largest LCD, a 100-inch thin-film transistor panel for high-definition LCD TVs. It features proprietary copper-based interconnect technology for HD picture quality without distortion of video signals.

Another vendor, eMagin Corp., will demonstrate its latest organic light-emitting diode technology, which it claims has the highest luminance and longest lifetime among OLED microdisplays. In April, eMagin announced the first four products in its OLED-XL microdisplay portfolio.

Cree Inc. will show its second-generation colorwave LED back-lighting product. It showed a prototype at last year's SID. Cree claims it has solved some of the problems associated with LED backlights, including weight, heat and power consumption.

Corning will unveil its Eagle XG substrate intended to meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations. Corning claims its substrate is the the first to be free of heavy metals. The company will also show its generation 8 substrates, the largest size glass for the LCD industry. It will be commercially available by the third quarter.