Now this is an interesting twist on a trying to get away from an LCD cell phone display that sucks up so much power that you have to recharge it twice a day.
Qualcomm's power-saving trick is straightforward: Instead of using the LCD method of shining a backlight through a color filter, a strategy that wastes as much as 95% of the screen's energy on light that never reaches the user's eye, Mirasol will merely reflect ambient light. The result is a screen that's not as bright in most situations--particularly indoors. But Mirasol screens use somewhere between 1% and 10% of an LCD's power, depending on the device, and are far easier to read in bright sunlight.
Now this display isn't such a big deal in the US right now. However here is the part where you see the stock price shoot up if they seriously start pushing these things out the door.
Last February, Chinese handset manufacturer Hisense launched an ultra-simple low-power phone using a two-color Mirasol display. That phone, Qualcomm says, will be one of several power-sipping handsets subsidized by the Chinese government in a program it is calling "Going Country," designed to give rural farmers access to cellphones.
You might see this Mirasol display on a few billion more cell phones in rural China. These are some of people that make up the half of humanity that still doesn't have a cell phone. I would be willing to bet that you will see these displays on cheaper phones in India and South America as well.
I'm sure Nokia can't wait to build a raft of those cheap phones that they seem to churn out that have these Mirasol displays on them. Any way you slice it this display could be a big seller. Qualcomm will be opening a new plant in Taiwan in the next couple of days to start rolling these things out in big numbers. I have QCOM on my watch list right now.
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