Liquavista Shows First Products at SID 2007

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, May 22nd 2007 – A year on from introducing itself to the display industry, Philips spin-out Liquavista is back at SID, in Long Beach California, showing off its first products.

The Eindhoven, Netherlands based company, which is developing displays based on its patented HEOS technology, has brought along a selection of displays incorporating its ColorMatch product platform.

The ColorMatch platform allows product designers unprecedented freedom to build a display into their product which matches the overall design ethos. No other display technology allows this degree of design flexibility.

Liquavista is showing its ColorMatch platform in two product concepts: a watch and a large area signage product the company calls Aquarius.

“We are showing our first generation watch module, driven with commercial silicon and powered off regular watch batteries” said Anthony Slack, VP Business Development at Liquavista.

“This demonstrates fantastic progress with our technology in the 12 months since we were last at SID on a number of fronts: Performance, manufacturability and compatibility with existing infrastructure” he added.

“With Aquarius we want to extend that offer to take advantage of the unbeatable “read at a distance” which you get with our displays because of their deep color intensity and excellent contrast in all lighting conditions. We have customer interest for Aquarius from Navigation, Automotive and Signage OEMs to name a few”

Commented Mark Gostick CEO: “The current holy grail of the watch industry is a good black and white display - with fast switching speeds to allow stop-watch functions. However, we have included a wide range of deep colors which also brings a fashion element back to digital watch applications. To top it off, our engineers have developed drive schemes which have reduced power consumption by an order of magnitude which you need for an “always on” application like watches.”

“We are now in discussion with our development partner about further productisation and commercial launch of this technology into the watch market. Having this early to market focus has enabled us to develop the technology rapidly and also bring our manufacturing processes forward to the point where we can commit to having a G2 line in mass production in the near future, based on an existing LCD facility.” He added.

“The Aquarius platform is also very exciting, not only because of its fantastic readability at all angles in all lights but because it clearly demonstrates the scalability of our technology and manufacturing processes. The display has a close to 6 inch diagonal size which makes a fantastic impression and can clearly be seen as pointing the way for future developments with our technology in Active Matrix based applications.” Gostick went on to say.

As well as developing these early products, Liquavista has expanded rapidly during the year: building its process and engineering development teams and extending its network of partnerships for supply chain. In February of 2007 they moved into new premises and have since commissioned their process development line.

Background on Liquavista BV

Liquavista was founded in 2006 by a team which originates from the world famous Philip Research Labs in Eindhoven. The company is backed by Philips and New Venture Partners who have recruited an experienced CEO, Mark Gostick to lead the company.

Based on technology invented by Rob Hayes & Johan Feenstra, in 2002, Liquavista uses advances in materials and technology to create Electrowetting displays that offer significant advantages over existing and emerging display technologies.

Producing bright, colorful images, which show video content at very low power, Liquavista’s products offer excellent indoor and outdoor viewability and are ideally suited for a wide variety of portable and mobile applications such as MP3 players, watches, cameras, phones, DVD players and automotive applications. Liquavista’s early applications, which enable bright vibrant colors in simple displays, are expected to enter the market early next year.