Company Press Release:
 
Samsung Electronics Develops Image Enhancement Technology for Mobile Applications
 
Seoul, Korea, December 1, 2005 – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced a new technology to enhance the image quality of mid and small sized LCD panels. Jointly developed by Samsung Electronics and Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology, this new mobile image enhancement (MIE) technology resolves the dark, unclear images on mid and small sized LCDs for mobile phones and handheld devices. With MIE technology, viewers can expect brighter and clearer onscreen images.

Samsung’s MIE technology has a built-in algorithm for smooth video image conversion. By greatly improving the image quality in small size screens, this technology is expected to raise the quality of video content as well as digital multimedia broadcasts received via handheld terminals.

Through the MIE technology, Samsung has been able to optimize the gray scale of LCD pixels without changing the color. Application of this technology will increase the luminance of a given LCD panel and backlight by at least 30 percent.

Wider LCDs mounted on portable multimedia players and demand for video reproduction on other mobile products required displays to consume more power. By implementing this MIE technology, the power consumption used to brighten the screen will also be reduced by 30 percent.

“This technology is the result of intensive, ongoing research on the implementation of semiconductors in next-generation displays,” said Jin-Tae Kim, Vice President of the DDI Development Team at Samsung Electronics System LSI Business Division. “We expect the MIE technology to be utilized in a wide range of high-definition mobile displays in the future.”

This MIE technology is built into Samsung’s display driver IC (DDI), which is used in LCDs to reproduce color, as an optimizing algorithm. Therefore, it does not require a separate dedicated chip or additional space. Samsung expects to ship samples of this MIE-enabled DDI in December.

Since 2002, Samsung has led the world market in DDIs. This product category represents sales of at least US$1 billion each year, and a variety of new DDI devices for mobile applications have been introduced recently.
 


About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2004 parent company sales of US$55.2 billion and net income of US$10.3 billion. Employing approximately 113,600 people in over 90 offices in 48 countries, the company consists of five main business units: Digital Appliance Business, Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business and Telecommunication Network Business. Recognized as one of the fastest growing brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones, and TFT-LCDs.