Mannerisms

Good to see Jacques Noels back on the European high-tech scene. As CEO of Thomson Semiconducteurs, Noels was one of the most high profile European technology CEOs during the 1980s,

E-paper displays could be coming into their own.Last week, Fujitsu announced a nifty colour terminal with an e-paper display which runs Windows CE, and the French company Nemoptics, headed up by ex-Thomson Semiconductors' boss Jacques Noels, announced it's moving into volume production of e-paper displays with Seiko Instruments.

I slept last night in a former monastery in the middle of a lake near Munich, courtesy of Sharp, who hold an annual forum there.

What happens when people talk about displays? Invariably up bubble hypey statements about OLEDs, Electrophorescents and FEDs. All of which, or each of which, we are invariably told, are the so-called ‘next mainstream display technology’.

The Venetians now have LED displays, similar to those on the London Underground, to show the times when the public boats which ply their canals, the Vaporetti, are due to arrive.

OLED has proved to be a disappointment, according to Paul Gray of analysts DisplaySearch, speaking at Sharp's recent Innovation Forum in Munich.

Thanks to DisplaySearch for this one: the ten fastest growing applications for flat panel displays  between 2008 and 2010. They are: