Qualcomm’s low-power act: Mirasol display tech holds promise for hungry devices

SAN FRANCISCO — A relatively new display technology that offers vast power savings, is viewable in direct sunlight and offers longer device use between charges has hit the market with a barely detectable splash.
Those first ripples could become a tsunami, if Qualcomm Inc. has its way.
First, however, Qualcomm’s patented “mirasol” display technology has reached market with a modest handful of design wins, mostly for monochrome screens measuring an inch or slightly less.
Those design wins include one handset (a bar phone from China’s Hisense), one ruggedized MP3 player (from Freestyle Audio), a Bluetooth earpiece (from Acoustic Research by Audiovox), a MP3-equipped headphone set (from Skullcandy) and a W-CDMA-equipped, streaming video camera (marketed by Korean operator KTF). (The Skullcandy headset, in fact, delivers a tiny color display.)
But according to Qualcomm, whose MEMS division is based on its 2005 purchase of Iridigm Display Corp., its new mirasol-branded display technology will overtake the handset market as it scales and ramps in coming years.
At least one analyst agreed that mirasol “has legs.”
“There’s nothing on the street that matches mirasol’s low power and nothing is likely for years,” said Will Strauss, principal at Forward Concepts, a semiconductor market analysis firm. “If Qualcomm can deliver three-inch color displays in the next three years, they’re doing well.”
Jim Cathey, VP for business development in Qualcomm MEMS Technology division, is – understandably – a believer that the San Diego-based chipset and IP vendor can do just that. He claimed that the current product introductions will soon give way to larger, full-color displays for smartphones and other wireless devices as the industry begins to “get it” and the technology matures. But Qualcomm hasn’t publicly declared a timeline for ramping this potentially disruptive technology.
After all, Qualcomm has an up-and-coming technology with a clear value proposition and a storyline to match. Why give the competition any insights into its plan for world domination?
According to Cathey, the mirasol value proposition offers low power (less than 1% of conventional display technology), visibility in sunlight (because it reflects light, rather than using backlighting) and increased ART – available revenue time, or the time between charges when subscribers are eating up revenue-generating services.
Because displays suck the most juice (admittedly, not a technical phrase) of any handset component, a low-power display offers high value. Devices can be smaller, if their batteries are smaller; or, they can devote that precious power savings to more functionality, Cathey said.
These characteristics should drive carrier interest – if all comes to fruition. Carriers, in turn, can presumably push mirasol on their handset suppliers.
A couple definitions are appropriate here.
MEMS stands for micro-electro-mechanical systems, a technology category that describes mechanisms that are one-millionth of a meter in size, which applies to the size of the cells that roughly represent pixels in the new technology. MEMS technology has been developed with fixed-angle lighting, but the advent of IMOD (get ready: interferometric modulation) has allowed MEMS to go mobile. “Mirasol” is Qualcomm’s proprietary brand name for its products in this area.
The technology storyline is that MEMS technology in general is possible due to “bio-mimicry.” Specifically, MEMS display technology is modeled after the structure of a butterfly’s wing, which is composed of shallow surface cells that open and close to allow ambient light to enter and reflect back in a manner that expresses various, shimmering colors.
Thus mirasol displays use ambient light, not backlighting, to create their imagery, saving power. And if ambient light is strong – as in direct sunlight – then the display is correspondingly stronger and more visible than conventional display technology.
At least that’s Qualcomm’s story and it’s sticking to it. In fact, this storyline is responsible for the butterfly-silhouette logo that accompanies the mirasol brand on the first devices to employ the technology.