A customer asked to compare our screen with an ipad screen in sunlight and while en route outside I ran into Charbax and asked him if he wished to video tape it – which he did – the result is here . Various Apple fans are crying foul which is bizarre to us. Let me say right here and right now – we will take the best ipad vs pixel qi screen test proposed and face off with them. (and to add – we have great respect for the Apple display team and their accomplishments – but have gone a different path to create innovative screens of our own).

- Mary Lou

We are quite honored to receive this prestigious award. Pixel Qi’s Multimode LCD technology offers a truly different screen from everything else available and solves the limitations of existing LCDs for mobile devices. Consumers are looking for products that render excellent images under all conditions, indoors and out, while enabling long battery life, and we are grateful to SID for recognizing Pixel Qi’s leadership in this field.

Today Pixel Qi received the 2010 IEEE ACE Award for “Emerging Technology offering the greatest potential for financial success” at the IEEE Awards Banquet (held in San Jose during the Embedded System Conference)
We won this award amidst a dazzling array of other emerging technologies and an extraordinary group of other short-listed top nominees including Google Chrome, NanoGaN, Intrinsity, and the IBM/Russian Railways collaboration.

We are somewhat stunned and deeply honored.

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Other progress to report:

Our screens are for sale and have been for sale for several months now in products, but in specialized products that aren’t sold in stores yet. These products are for professional use and bundled with, for example, monthly services; they might not ever be sold in stores. Our initial manufacturing partner did get slowed down in the midst of the economic crises and that did effect our ability to ramp to the schedule our higher volume customers wanted. We are beyond this now thanks to strong pull from these customers: some of the largest computer companies in the world and also from the broader community who want our screens now! We are scaling to multiple manufacturers (and beginning to ramp production) to the meet the strong demand. (added note: this will still take some time to work through the system to get into stores.)

Look for our DIY partner announcement shortly. We have been working on the details of this and are excited about it.

Also: we have wider viewing angle technology working and will bring that into high volume production as soon as this fall. We have been working with a variety of touch screen suppliers and touch integration/assembly houses. Touch integration with our screens is already working via a variety of solutions including projected capacitance touch and is available now in our products.

One of the reasons I’m personally committed to doing this goes back to my One Laptop per Child experience and girls in a poor rural part of Nigeria who helped us test the early beta-laptop builds. In their school they had slanted desks bolted to benches with 4-5 kids per desk/bench combo. When any kid fidgeted or bumped all the laptops would fall on the concrete floors. The laptops were designed to be rugged and didn’t break usually, but in this early build one of the cables to the touchpad/keyboard was 1mm too short and could become “unseated”. This meant the keyboard and the touchpad would no longer work unless something was done.

Luckily: An 11 year old girl decided to open a laptop hospital. Unfortunately the boys really missed out here, because in this part of Nigeria “everyone knows” only girls work at hospitals, she eventually recruited girls as young as 5 to help out in the hospital. This group of girls armed with screwdrivers starting taking apart the laptops and reseating the cables. Sometimes they’d change out a screen, or a speaker. They learned about the hardware of their laptops. They got to see what was inside. They got better and better at fixing things by learning as they went.

Ministers of Education had a tough time believing that these girls could fix the hardware, so they would visit – to see it with their own eyes – and start thinking differently about maintenance of hardware. We kept preaching that ownership was the best way to assure maintenance.

Yet, most people are scared to change their laptop screen. It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbuld: it’s basically 6 screws, pulling off a bezel, unconnecting the old screen and plugging this one in. That’s it. It’s a 5 minute operation.

Additionally: There is major consolidation of the LCD industry underway right now and the ramp for new products are sometimes getting slowed down – not us so much – but we do see other projects slowing down dramatically. We are concerned because this slows innovation in our field and keeps it commodity based (and very predictable) during the consolidation – easier for the bankers, but worse for the people wanting innovative screens.

Meanwhile: I got news from IEEE/EETimes that the Pixel Qi screen has been nominated for an award: “the most creative electronics design of the year”. We are completely amazed by this, delighted that IEEE and EETimes are watching us and most honored to be nominated.

- Mary Lou

We will open our suite in the Venetian to the press from 7-9AM on Friday January 8th to show you our latest screens. If you are a member of the press and would like to see these screens please rsvp with Courtney Wang (courtneywang@pixelqi.com).

We regret that we are unable to host the general public at this time, but we will make an announcement on how the public can get our screens soon.

- Mary Lou

We can now announce that the first units are going into specialized tablet devices with multi-touch. Increasingly these screens will be super-slim, but some customers prefer the standard thickness.

During Q1 2010 we will make every attempt to allow a small number of our screens to be available to the DIY community. If possible please hold your individual requests until we post information on how to do this. We do hear you, but we are flat-out starting production this month. Individual requests will not be answered until we post information on how to do DIY orders.

Pixel Qi will be at CES in Las Vegas in early January supporting our customers. We can’t yet announce with whom we will be showing but hope to shortly.

We aren’t late!

We are starting production on schedule at the end of year and ramping up volumes in early next year… We are very proud of our ability to create a great new product-line over the last year amid the collapse of many banks and dry up of venture capital (this while we were seeking and gaining our first funding round) and in the subsequent quarters, while we were developing our new product-line, we weathered the great uncertainties of the LCD manufacturers: who faced bankruptcy and underwent massive restructuring to survive. Believe me, we were far from a priority with our manufacturing partners given these conditions.

Now the publishing industry seems poised on a major transition , and we appear to be the only screen entering mass production designed for reading that offers color, video, longer battery life and works as-is with existing software stacks (from OS to viewers) and in any lighting condition including the pitch black and outside in direct sunlight and integrates easily with touchscreens. It’s fun work – and we are hiring more and more to address the great demand for our products. Consider to join us!