Today, touch screen functions are becoming indispensable on displays for mobile devices such as smartphones, digital cameras, PDAs*1, and UMPCs*2. However, conventional methods to provide such functions mainly involve laminating or bonding a film on top of the LCD panel, leading to problems with reduced display image quality and increased thickness for the display section.

In this light, Sharp developed its proprietary System LCD technology to successfully embed an optical sensor used in devices like scanners in each pixel of the LCD panel. This technology eliminates the need for films, resulting in a thinner, beautifully clear screen display compared to conventional touch screens. In addition, tactile recognition based on simultaneously touching multiple points on the screen is now possible, a feature previously difficult to implement. For example, users can easily tap the screen with two fingers to enlarge or reduce a displayed map. Also, the scanner function can be used to scan in a business card placed on top of the screen, and further improvements to this function are expected to enable fingerprint authentication in the future.

Sample shipments will begin in September of this year, with volume production slated to start next spring.

As a leading LCD company, Sharp will continue to develop new proprietary LCD technologies in the small and medium-sized LCD field as well as in the area of large-screen LCDs for TVs, and will be contributing to further advances in mobile devices in the future. -Sharp