Canon-Toshiba Joint Venture On SED Collapses

An anonymous reader writes "SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) displays were supposed to be the brightest, most energy-efficient TVs to hit the market, so Canon and Toshiba created a joint venture in 2004 to capitalize on the emerging technology. The resulting entity, SED Inc., was sued in 2005 by Nano-Proprietary, the company that licensed SED technology to Canon in 1999. Nano-Proprietary says that the deal it signed with Canon doesn't extend to Toshiba. Rather than continue to fight the lawsuit and delay SED even further, Canon has now decided to buy out Toshiba's stake in SED Inc." Canon says that SED TVs will be delivered on time in Q4 of this year, but volume manufacturing (which Toshiba was supposed to handle) is being rethought.

Jerks

[QueePWNzor]

It looks like a good idea (the TVs.) Unfortunately, legal "mumbo jumbo" has, as always, gotten in the way. I don't see why Cannon had to give up, they could have probably dealt with it in court. Now the world can't replace their 2-day old, state-of-the-art 50in. plasma high-def sets. (sniffle) I don't like the idea of this split, and hopefully they'll find some way to make it work out. But Toshiba will probably hate Cannon temporarily, especially with the "Canon had planned to exploit Toshiba for its 'mass-production technologies,'" remark. (They'll get over it, because Cannon will try to pay big $$$ for them to produce something else:) I simply don't get it. Toshiba will come up with an alternative within a year, all the switching engineers will quit ASAP, and Cannon will find a way to produce the sets, but will be in debt forevermore. I hate deals like this, and I doubt it will be nearly perfect in the long-run. Oh well.

Re:Well you know what they say,,,

[kfg]

Except in this case it isn't taking over your enemy, it's ditching your friend. Canon didn't beat 'em, they capitulated, but made it good to their patner instead of dragging them down a hole.

KFG

LCD with LED backlight rocks

[Jeff Tong]

I believe LCD panels with LED backlight unit is going to wipe out all opponents in the market. Such a combination is by no mean superior to OLED or SED. However, both technologies of LCD an LED are owned by Taiwanese companies. Some of them are even ready to produce LCD panels with LED backlight units. Although the price of LED backlight unit is currently much more expensive that of traditional CCFL, it may be lowered to a relatively low level in the next few year. As a result, LCD will knock out all rivals in the world and dominate the market of flat display panel.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo

[jours]

What's interesting to me is the bottom part of TFA titled "Legal Mumbo Jumbo". I haven't been following this, but it sure sounds like the case has been awfully contentious.

Most important though, the complaint is (1) that Toshiba wasn't licensed and (2) that there is a breech of the agreement with Canon over "excluded products" (among a bunch of other stuff). That might mean that - Toshiba or not - Canon's not going to be free of the lawsuit, and not going to be releasing SED products either. Curiously, Nano's site doesn't mention any other licensees of their technology. So...one has to wonder if Toshiba and Canon together can't get these things to market and make them competitive, then who are they hoping to find that can do it?

Seems to me the best move would've been to let Canon/Toshiba take them to market and then go after all the competitors (Sony, Phillips, Hitachi, etc) for a license when they try to enter the market. But I guess that's why I don't own a multi-billion dollar electronics company.

I wonder how small they can get these...

[Jerf]

I'm wondering how small they'll eventually be able to get these. I wonder if they'll ever get to the point where they can fit one of these in a laptop. SEDs should only consume power proportional to the brightness of the display, so I could see light lettering on a dark background coming back; display less stuff, use less power.

Add an SED to a laptop with solid-state storage (which, by the time this is feasible, will be at least where laptop hard drives are today), and the continuing work on processors that can shut themselves down nicely, and we may get some truly efficient laptops out of the deal, that only use power when actually doing something. Imagine instead of "suspending", just setting a "blank the screen" screensaver, and ending up with about the same power usage as a suspended laptop of today, only your torrent is still going...

A man can dream.