Samsung could be the first to introduce a production notebook with a transparent display, Samsung America’s digital imaging VP Reid Sullivan has revealed. After showing a 14-inch see-through AMOLED screen at CES this year, the Korean company now says that testing suggests the PC could be in shops within the next 12 months. Sullivan expects that "all" Samsung’s AV hardware could use the technology soon.
The company has already tested out transparent AMOLEDs on a small scale with the IceTouch, a media player with a 2-inch touchscreen. Until now, such displays have often been cost-prohibitive due to the price of an AMOLED, but economies of scale have grown to make at least smaller screens reasonable. The IceTouch should sell in the US for about $378 within the first half of this year.
AMOLEDs by themselves are considered an advantage over LCD through their thinness, their color accuracy and the absence of an energy-hungry backlight. Transparency is likely to be just a cosmetic feature at first, but it allows for notebooks, players and phones that lift the isolation of the user and helps handheld users see what’s in view.
