16M-color DDI rolls for AMOLED handset displays

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd says it has developed a 16M-color display driver IC (DDI) for active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays used in mobile phones and other handheld devices.

"The AMOLED market is expanding steadily," said Jin Tae Kim, VP of Samsung Electronics' System LSI division. "In the future, we expect AMOLEDs will be applied to a wide range of mobile devices to deliver the high resolution they require."

The global mobile communications market is transitioning rapidly from 2.5G products to 3G technology platforms that support a wider range of multimedia functions and services, including digital media broadcasting (DMB) and video telephony. Samsung's new mobile DDI for AMOLED displays support QVGA resolutions (240 RGB by 320 dots) and is capable of producing a range of over sixteen million colors. It is well in step with the recent expansion of multimedia functions and services offered in mobile devices.

The AMOLED display is a self-luminous device that operates by having electrical current flow between two thin films made of organic material. This allows for lighter and thinner display designs. Images are shown at the speed of light, so they look natural without the ghosting effects seen in fast-paced video sequences like sporting events. These characteristics make the AMOLED display suitable for video applications.

Samsung's new 16M-color DDI self-adjusts the screen brightness, illuminating only those areas that need light. As a result, power consumption is minimized and battery life is extended. The ROM is built in separately, enabling red, blue and green (RBG) gamma compensation to reproduce more lifelike images.

The 16M-color AMOLED DDI is currently in mass production and has been introduced in Samsung SDI's AMOLED panels. Samsung's broad line up of DDIs for LCDs, PDPs and AMOLED displays addresses the diverse needs of its customer base.

According to Display Search, the AMOLED market will reach 127.71 million units by 2011, up by 101 percent from this year's 7.82 million units.