panel

Update:This blog has been corrected to reflect that the total flat-panel display business value represents global sales.

SAN DIEGO--This year could be a turning point for the flat-panel TV industry, as it decides how it will face the dual threats of market saturation and rapidly declining prices.

The total flat-panel display business in the worldwide in 2007 was $102 billion, up from $11 billion in 1998, according to DisplaySearch. And while that growth is encouraging, it's not necessarily good news for all sectors of the market.

One of the success stories is the rise of LCD (liquid crystal … Read more

Pioneer plans to let someone else make its plasma TV panels, according to several reports.

Reuters reported Tuesday that the company will cease production of its own plasma panels because that portion of its business continues to lose money. The company will still sell plasma sets, but plans to get its plasma panels from Matsushita, parent company of Panasonic, the Nikkei business daily reported. Panasonic is the biggest plasma TV vendor in the world, shipping nearly 40 percent of all plasma displays, while Pioneer ranks fifth, shipping just over 6 percent of plasmas worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2007, … Read more

Sony is suddenly in unfamiliar territory. And that's not a bad thing.

The consumer electronics company, which has long put a premium on quality over TV volumes, was the leader in LCD televisions shipped in North America during the fourth quarter. At an almost 13 percent unit share, it's a fairly dramatic leap for the company, which jumped from fourth place to first in the space of one quarter.

Sony entered the last year with caution, saying that flat-panel TV prices were dropping too fast, but ended on a decidedly different note.

Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow seemed … Read more

Is it time for a "small revolution" in the world of renewable energy electronics?

Start-up Enphase Energy on Tuesday announced that it has landed $6.5 million in funding with the bulk of the money coming from Third Point Ventures.

The company makes a system that uses a microinverter, an electronics device that converts direct current from solar panels to grid-ready alternating current on each individual panel.

Each panel can also relay information on its performance to Enphase Energy's Web site, which customers can view from a browser. The company plans to release the system, aimed at … Read more

When we saw a touch screen recently on an external hard drive, we knew there'd be no stopping the touch revolution. The latest category to succumb to the trend is the Bluetooth headset.

Developed for mobile phones and PDAs, the Genius BT-031 has a built-in touch-sensitive panel and slide control to adjust volume, according to Gizmag, as well as a wireless range of up to 30.

We appreciate the efforts of Genius, which is always trying something different, but we often find ourselves dubious about some of its achievements. (Witness the solar-powered keyboard, hybrid speaker-camera, and combo mouse VoIP phone.) … Read more

Correction: Spokespeople from SunPower and MMA Renewables said the size of the installation at Nellis Air Force base has been revised to 14.2 megawatts, not 15 megawatts as the Air Force and those companies originally said.

Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the land of lots of sun and plenty of land, will be home to a 70,000 solar-panel installation which, at 14 megawatts, will be the largest in North America.

The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday said Nellis and SunPower have finished the first phase of the project, which will save the base $1 million a … Read more

An astronaut fixed a torn solar panel on the International Space Station on Saturday in a risky procedure that involved riding a robotic arm to the damaged area in order to install cufflinks on the torn wing, according to the Associated Press.

In an emergency mission, spacewalker Scott Parazynski rode the 90-foot robotic arm to the far end of the shuttle complex as the crew extended the wing to its full length. He then clipped a hinge wire and, guided by fellow spacewalker Douglas Wheelock, installed the cufflinks. The 2.5-foot-long rip had occurred while astronauts were unfurling the new … Read more

You can make solar panels with impure silicon, claims Roy Johnson. You just have to know how to isolate the undesirables.

CaliSolar, a solar start-up that derives from research originally conducted at UC Berkeley, has come up with a way to make solar cells out of upgraded metallurgical silicon, which is less pure and less costly than the industry standard electrical grade silicon, according to Johnson, the company's CEO, at a meeting at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations conference taking place this week.

Electrical grade silicon is 99.99999 plus percent pure, but it costs $150 to $250 … Read more

At a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday, Hitachi unveiled its new "Ultra Thin" LCD TVs, a new line of flat-panel sets that measure only 35 millimeters (1.5 inches) in thickness. While other companies have also announced uberskinny flat-panel TVs recently--some even thinner than Hitachi's--the Ultra Thin (or UT) LCD line is the first to actually hit the market.

"Our focus for the last few years in the flat-panel business has been on the plasma side, but we've been working very diligently on the LCD side," Kevin Sullivan, Hitachi's chief strategy officer … Read more