Sanyo and iFire in technology development tie-up

24 Jul 2002

Westaim Corporation subsidiary iFire Technology of Canada has announced a technology development collaboration with Sanyo Electric of Japan to advance iFire's solid-state, inorganic electroluminescent (EL) display technology targeting the large-screen consumer flat-panel TV market.

Sanyo already has a collaboration agreement with Kodak to develop organic LED small molecule technology, initially for mobile phones and handheld devices but looking in the long term at commercial hang-on-the-wall TV. Sanyo is clearly hedging its bets so as not to be left out on disruptive technologies.

"Sanyo's consumer television leadership and technical expertise is world class," said Barry Heck, president of iFire. "This non-exclusive technical collaboration aligns iFire with a very important industry leader who will greatly assist us as we move from an R&D focus to pilot production. As our partner, Sanyo is helping iFire establish the technical and commercial foundation for a high-performance, affordable flat panel TV."

From its side, Sanyo's Fusao Terada said: "We believe there is a huge market opportunity for over 30 inches large-screen flat-panel televisions that are competitively priced, and we also believe that iFire's inorganic EL technology is a strong candidate to capture a large share of this market."

In May, iFire demonstrated a full-color 17 inch inorganic EL display prototype at the SID exhibition in Boston, US, with claims that it was the largest ever shown.

The company is targeting the large screen (greater than 25 inches) TV market because its technology is low cost, owing to its solid-state structure, and has quality comparable to CRTs in terms of unrestricted viewing angle, fast video response rate and color.