Samsung buys Liquavista: You’ll electrowet your displays

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.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":238663,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,entrepreneur,media,mobile,","session":"C"}']

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