LONDON – Pixel Qi Corp. (San Bruno, Calif.), a developer of reflective liquid crystal displays that can be read in sunlight thereby saving power, has announced that its 7-inch and 10-inch color versions are now shipping in about one dozen consumer products. The company claims to have shipped 3 million screens. In addition, Pixel Qi has a number of military design wins.
The design wins for the current displays, which go up to 1024 by 600 pixels on the 7-inch display and the 1280 by 800 pixels on the 10-inch display, include Android 10-inch tablets, a notebook computer and several dedicated handheld units for use outdoors. These include a carwash control and a golf training system.
The displays can be full color with the backlight on and perform like standard LCDs. With the backlight off they drop back to a monochrome reflective mode that is readable in sunlight and support rapid switching for updating information and video.
Mary Lou Jepson, CEO of Pixel Qi, who wrote about the design wins on the company's website added in the blog that: "We are also beginning design on some dramatically higher resolution and massively lower power new screen architectures." Before founding Pixel Qi in 2008 Jepsen was CTO of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization.
Pixel Qi includes the XO laptop from OLPC in its design win list and also has design wins due to ship soon with with Orchard Inc. for a ruggedized tablet and an Android tablet called Light 2 from ZTE Corp.
The design wins include:
Inboxpad VQ A8388 Tablet PC Android 2.3- 10″ tablet
Sunbook – a 10″ notebook by Clover Systems
Sol Tablet PC – runs Windows 7
Joyplus M10PQ – 10″ tablet
Padpro 10″ tablet by Evigroup
Adam tablet – a 10″ Android tablet by Notion Ink
Carwash Control – by Unitec Electronics
Reflection Golf – a golf stroke training system by 5D tech
Sol Sidekick, a motion analysis system by Sports Motion
Hydra t-3 by InHand – a rugged tablet (waterproof too)
Auxiliary USB powered open frame – by Display Solution AG
The XO laptop – by One Laptop Per Child
Coming soon:
Toughlet tablet by Orchard
Light 2 by ZTE
Pixel Qi entered the Silicon 60,
EE Times' list of emerging startup companies at version 11.0 in October 2010.
Related links and articles:
3M makes strategic investment in Pixel Qi
Pixel Qi strikes Taiwan LCD foundry deal
$100 laptop requires low-cost displays, says OLPC CTO