Genoa Introduces Multi-Primary Technology for Mobile Devices

Herzliya, Israel. Genoa Color Technologies Ltd., which licenses and develops multi-primary technology for TVs, has announced a new version called MPC Pixcale that has been adapted for the mobile device market. Although the handheld displays based on Pixcale won't feature imagery quite as rich as that for larger screens, it will be quite good indeed, according to Ilan Ben-David, Chief Executive Officer of Genoa. Pixcale is also designed to reduce power usage, thus addressing the current market need for devices (and displays) that allow longer battery life.

Pixcale works using a standard TFT array with the five-color (as opposed to RGB) filter. The additional colors, explains Ben-David, enable a display to use less backlighting power to achieve the same brightness that it would with RGB). The additional colors also faciliate a richer color palette.

Other LCD solutions that are low power, claims Ben-David, don't address the high-image quality issues necessary for the larger mobile devices that Pixcale is designed for. "There is the RGBW (red, green, blue, white) solution, which has higher power savings, but the white dilutes the other colors. So for video and colors, the contrast is not so high," he says. Pixcale is designed to strike a balance between excellent image quality and power savings. Those savings can amount to as much as 40% of the power consumed by displays in phones, Ben-David asserts, and as much as 15% of the total battery life of a mobile device. Such savings become increasingly important as the devices are used for Internet browsing, gaming, texting, and other visual-type applications that not only require more power and more vibrant imagery but also tend to compel users to use the devices for longer periods than they might have back in the days of voice-only.

According to Chris Crotty, Director of Small and Medium Displays Research for the market research firm DisplaySearch, this larger device area of the mobile market is high-end and also high-growth, especially as compared to the mobile device market as a whole these days. So Genoa, with its promise to reduce power consumption while improving image quality, does seem to be making a good tactical move with regard to the market.

"I think what's also attractive about this is it's not disruptive to the supply chain," says Crotty. "It's a simple solution that involves just changing the color filter and the driver." He also approves of the company's decision to market the technology directly to handset manufacturers. Usually, Ben-David explains, this type of technology is licensed to the TFT fabs. "But TFT fabs don't care about these battery life issues so much," he says. "They are very conservative and operations-oriented." --Jenny Donelan