In a situation where Japan’s resurgent display makers and China’s display manufacturers, armed with price competitiveness, have been fast closing in on global display leader S. Korea, the 14th International Meeting on Information Display (IMID), one of the world’s top three symposiums dedicated to the display industry, kicked off with a great fanfare on August 26 at EXCO Daegu in S. Korea.
The IMID is viewed as one of the world’s top three information display conferences, along with the US’s 52-year-old SID Display Week and Japan’s 25-year-old International Display Workshops (IDW).
Marking its 14th year, the IMID boasted over 2,000 participants from 25 nations and set a new record in the number of papers submitted - a bumper 600. As a matter of fact, the IMID 2014 received more papers than US’s time-honored SID Display Week did, a sign implying that S. Korea’s international profile has been appreciably enhanced in the global display industry.
On the second day of the event, world-renowned display gurus from the US’s SID paid a visit to the IMID 2014, held at EXCO Daegu. Besides, Opening Tea Ceremony was held before keynote addresses were delivered, providing foreign visitors with opportunities to savor the nation’s traditional tea.
Samsung Display CEO Park Dong-gun underlined the need for improving key materials and manufacturing processes
Samsung Display CEO Park Dong-gun, Adrian Travis, a senior researcher at Microsoft and Dr. Martin Schadt from Microsoft High-Tech Consulting took the podium as keynote speakers.
“Displays have played the role of disseminating information in line with the advancement of the human race. They will continue to evolve in a direction that could further enrich the human race and deliver greater happiness,” said CEO Park Dong-gun, who also serves as the head of the organizing committee for the IMID 2014 and Chairman of the Korea Display Industry Association (KDIA).
“Above all, next-generation technologies, such as flexible and wearable technology, will play a pivotal role in bringing changes to our life styles,” CEO Park added.
“Flexible displays will transform our lifestyle in the future. Advances in flexible display technology will help us overcome the limitations of display designs. Still, the production of a bona fide flexible display requires improvement in key materials and manufacturing processes,” he emphasized.
CEO Park was followed by Adrian Travis, a senior researcher at Microsoft, who delivered a keynote speech titled “Opportunities for Display Invention and Up Integration in Human to Machine Interfaces.”
Adrian Travis captured the audience’s attention by showing a video clip of a prototype transparent display. In the video, a person moved his fingertip in a circular motion on the transparent display and then a circle was actually drawn on the display. The video was intriguing enough to heighten the audience’s expectations of transparent displays, the next generation of display technology.
Then, Martin Schadt, a display pioneer from Microsoft High-Tech Consulting, delivered a keynote speech titled “Photo-Alignment of LCD Devices by Side-Chain Polymers,” garnering positive reviews from the audience.
