The Academic Conference Workshop and Business Forum was held on the first day. The workshop was a venue where 37 experts introduced the latest trends from the basics of display element technology. Interest in the Business Forum was hot enough to fill up the 1,000 seat convention hall to capacity. It was an excellent opportunity to look at the present and the future of the display industry all over the world. It was also an opportunity for companies to see competing corporations' market strategies and technology development propulsion strategies.
The Academic Conference was held under the joint auspices of the Korean Information Display Society and US Society for Information Display (SID) as well as the United States Display Consortium (USDC). The conference attendees were divided into 52 oral sessions as well as a poster session of 13 display-related themes.
Around 410 papers, which were chosen through a fierce screening process among scores of papers accepted from each country of the world, were presented to the conference. They consisted of oral presentations of 108 papers from overseas and 99 papers from Korea, and poster presentations of 36 papers from overseas and of 167 papers from home.
In this year's IMID Conference, the number of foreign presenters as well as visitors increased greatly compared to other years. The people involved were able to easily feel that the IMID has become an international conference.
Over 20% of the 1200 people attending the Academic Conference were foreigners. The number of visitors to this Exhibition also neared 4,000 people on its first day. The foreign participants who visited Korea often said that they were impressed by Korean displays' technology levels. Many also said that the conference was by no means inferior to any other conference in the world.
Daegu's deep relationship with display industry
This year's IMID/IDMC 2006 keynote speakers were Samsung SDI President Kim Soon-taek from Korea and AU Optronics Vice President C.T. Liu from Taiwan. These enthusiastic speeches drew scores responses from numerous visitors who visited this Conference.
Samsung SDI CEO Kim Soon-taek presented the path of the future display industry by naming Display DNA theory in his keynote address. In his speech entitled "The New Race for the Ultimate Display", Kim said that D=NxA and can be expressed as D(Dominant Display)=N(Natural Picture Quality) x A(Adaptability), adding that a flat board display market can satisfy consumers when D=NxA is realized.
Currently 30 inch and 40 inch category products are forming the main market in the large-sized DTV market, but President Kim said that PDP, the eldest brother of large-sized displays, is forecast to have the initiative in the large-sized DTV market, with priority given to the 50 inch category, by securing cost competitiveness through diverse technology innovation.
The president was confident that Samsung SDI would dominate the AM OLED business whose merit includes clear colors, fast response speed and a wide visual field angle. He explained that with the rapid expansion of the PMP, UMPC, Smartphone and Camera phone markets, demand for premium-quality displays will increase compared with the demand for lower-quality QVGA displays.
Furthermore, Kim expressed his opinion that PDP and AM OLED represent a feature he called Natural Picture Quality, and will enlarge their market dominance in the coming display market, adding that Natural Picture Quality will lead the display market over the next 10 years as the Flat and Slim feature has in the previous 10 years.
C.T. Liu, AU Optronics vice president and CTO, on the other hand, caught the public eye by raising a completely different generational division argument compared with the established LCD generation division argument. He asserted that new perspectives and judgment criteria are necessary because LCD industry growth speeds all over the world are proceeding faster than predicted.
He pointed out that new judgment criteria are necessary based on LCD technical progress transitions. The existing process involves dividing points in time when a technology such as a notebook, monitor or TV is improved into first, second, or third generations.
Liu maintained that we have to mark the time from the beginning of LCD development to the time of mature mass production scale as the first generation. The second generation was characterized by the invisible competition for LCD performance improvements such as response speed boosts as well as visual field angle improvements.
Then, if the third generation was a period when material innovations such as LCD BLU, film applications and circuits were completed, the CTO said that the fourth generation is a future in which LCDs advance a step further to reach a level of bidirectional communication with human beings, both visually and sensationally.
New perspectives needed on display evolution
Before these keynote speeches, there were welcoming addresses by Larry Weber, president of SID and Kim Bum-il, Mayor of Daegu Metropolitan City. Mayor Kim expressed deep affection for the increasingly influential IMID exhibition, saying that it is very significant for the city that the IMID conference as well as exhibition are held in Daegu. He wishes the IMID continuous development in the coming years.
In a joint press conference with journalists, the Mayor emphasized, "Daegu is nurturing the display industry as its long-term goal, not from a short-term plan and will nurture Daegu as the hub of the Korean display industry by propelling R&D activation centering around universities and to actively induce display factories as well as collaborating companies."
Originally, the IMID conference as well as exhibition were held in EXCO in Daegu until 2004, starting from the first time in 2001. However due to the inconvenience of local exhibition venues, there were some cases which were held in COEX in Seoul.
Daegu was able to recapture the IMID conference as well as exhibition by persuading them that with this exhibition as a foothold, Daegu and all of North Kyungsang province can contribute to the development of the display-related industry since the relative importance of the display industry is high there.
North Kyungsang province hosts a total of 133 display associated companies such as Samsung Corning and LG Philips LCD factory in Gumi. Moreover, this area accounts for 33% of the total display production at home and 15% of the total world production.
Thus, Daegu's desire for this function is strong enough to support expenses of around 150 million won (about $160,000) for its success. Mayor Kim said that particularly, the conference's scale was bigger than an ordinary year as this year's conference is held simultaneously with the IDMC which is held alternately in Korea and Taiwan.
After several keynote speeches in the morning of August 23, a tape-cutting ceremony to herald the opening was held in the lobby of EXCO while scores of celebrities attended to celebrate IMID/IDMC 2006, including Daegu Mayor Kim Bum-il, Larry Weber, US SID president, Samsung SDI president Kim Soon-taek and Professor Whang Ki-woong of Seoul National University who concurrently serves as chairman of the conference.
New notable products were conspicuous in large numbers at this exhibition including JSR MicroKorea's phase difference film for a polarizing plate, Back Light Unit (BLU) for a 32 inch LCD TV by GLDTEK, PI film as well as prism sheets for LCD component materials from Kolon, and many others.
Samsung, LG not yielding an inch
Diboss' Internet TV particularly engaged visitors' interest, presenting a new concept of Internet TV (IPTV) by teaming up with Daum. This product can not only receive IPTV signals, which are provided by Daum without installing a set top box for IPTV-exclusive use, but also enables an Internet connection through the TV.
It is the first time that a package-model TV able to receive IPTV without installing a separate set top box has been developed, a spokesperson at Diboss said. Through this product, Diboss is scheduled to provide customers with diverse content such as Videos on Demand (VOD), music, education and games that Daum will service.
They are launching 32 inch, 40 inch and 46 inch models in the coming months.
However above all, visitors' interest was focused on Samsung Electronics and LG Philips LCD, the two leading display enterprises in Korea. The two corporations didn't yield an inch each other, presenting competitively diverse products and newly developed technologies continuously during the exhibition period.
The largest 100 inch LCD panel for TV, which represents LG Philips LCD, comes equipped with a contrast ratio of 3000 to 1, super IPS technology, 180 degree visual field angle and other new features. LG Philips LCD also presented high resolution 37 inch, 42 inch, and 47 inch LCDs for TV made with environmentally-friendly RoHS-compliant Full HD at 1920x1020 resolution. Samsung Electronics underlined that the company's 70 inch Full HD LCD panel is 30 inches smaller than LG Philips LCD's product, but aims to commercialize during the course of the next year.
Premium LCD products were one of the major competition fields during the period of the exhibition.
LG Philips LCD presented a 30 inch Wide QXGA+ quality LCD monitor panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1600, boasting the largest size in the world for the highest resolution. The company also showed off a 17.1 inch Wide notebook PC panel no more than 6.7mm thick and a Premium Desktop Monitor as well as TFT-LCD panel for notebook PCs.
Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics mapped out a strategy to concentrate on Digital Information Display (DID). Keeping an eye on the fact that DID is being watched as the Fourth Wave following notebooks, monitors and TVs, Samsung Electronics will market DID products of diverse size including 40 inches and 46 inches to preoccupy this market.
It is said that this product actualizes clear high resolution screening strong enough outdoors to be able to substitute for poster advertisement.
Korea Still Display Leader
AUO Vice President CT Liu Clarifies OLED Stance
 Taiwanese display companies such as AU Optronics have outpaced Korea's prominent display companies such as Samsung and LG Philips LCD in their shipments and profits this year. Samsung's strengths now lay in its large-size display offerings, but it may have even more competition from its Taiwanese counterpart in the fourth quarter of this year, as AUO is preparing to offer 40 and 46 inch panels in direct competition with the Korean display giant.
AUO remains strong even though it was reported as giving up on OLED display technology development in July. At the time AUO denied rumors that it was suspending development of OLED but did not supply production or capacity details to quell rumors. AUO started its OLED development in 2002 with the announcement that it was the first to introduce amorphous silicon-based (a-Si) full color OLED technology to the world. It has since developed two different sizes of OLED substrates available, at 200x200 mm and 370x470 mm.
Through an interview with the Korea IT Times at the IMID in Daegu, Korea, Vice President C.T. Liu of AU Optronics confirmed officially: "We never really publicly announced the real reason why we did not really stop, we suspended the effort for OLED."
Two or three years from now, if the infrastructure of the OLED environment becomes more mature, then AUO will consider restarting the OLED effort, Liu said. Will Korean LCD makers be outgunned by their Taiwanese rivals
In the first quarter of this year, Taiwan accounted for 52.2% of LCD panel shipments, while Korea had a 37.4% share. A year earlier, Korea had a lead of 48.8% against Taiwan's 41.8%.
As Taiwan is expected to remain the leader in LCD panel production for the foreseeable future, some ask the question, "Will Korean liquid crystal display (LCD) makers be outgunned by their Taiwanese rivals"
One big reason for the fall in their market share is Korean LCD producers' strategy to reduce sales of small LCD panels that have become cheap and widely available in favor of bigger ones, particularly TV screens measuring 40 inches or more diagonally but thin enough to be hung on the wall. On the contrary, Taiwan LCD manufacturers appear the have enlarged their market share by beefing up sales of small LCD panels, according to experts like Prof. Whang Ki-woong of Seoul National University who currently serves as chairman of IMID/IDMC 2006.
As the loss of market share in this sophisticated, capitalintensive business highlights the dangers for Korea of losing high-tech competitiveness, Korea is likely to have to change its approach to the high-tech industry to remain competitive. According to experts, companies must focus more on entrepreneurial innovation and less on lower-margin, or commodity, products.
In regard to the outlook of the LCD industry, Vice President C.T. Liu said: "Especially, this industry is very optimistic in terms of market side, in terms of technology spectrum, and also in terms of new applications."
Samsung, LG Philips LCD and AUO will continue to bring new momentum to this industry in the following years, the vice president expressed as his optimistic opinion.
Dr. Liu attended Princeton University, where he received a PhD in Electronic Engineering. He has been the vice president in charge of the AUO Technology Center (ATC) since 2004. His previous work experience includes 12 years of work for the United States-based Bell Labs.
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