Sharp FYQ1’11 con­sol­i­dated finan­cial results pre­sen­ta­tion, page 5:

• LCD Color TVs: 156.0 → 154.3, -1.1%
• LCDs: 261.0 → 188.0, -28.0%
• Mobile Phones: 133.6 → 92.5, -30.8%

Revenues, in bil­lions of yen, declined year over year in all three dis­play sec­tors for Sharp. Due to dete­ri­o­rat­ing ASPs, rev­enues dropped despite LCD Color TV ship­ments increas­ing 22.3% Y/Y to 3.29 mil­lion units.

In the Consolidated Financial Release, page 4:

Meanwhile, in mobile LCDs, we will accel­er­ate con­ver­sion of pro­duc­tion lines at the Kameyama Plant and a shift to growth areas, includ­ing LCDs for smart­phones and tablet ter­mi­nals. At the same time, we will work to com­mer­cial­ize mobile LCDs using oxide semi­con­duc­tor, InGaZnO (IGZO), devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd. This will allow us to cre­ate high value-added LCDs for next-generation mobile devices, fea­tur­ing high def­i­n­i­tion, thin pro­file and low power con­sump­tion, which will con­tribute to enhanc­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of our LCD business.

SEL and Sharp jointly announced their Continuous Grain Silicon (CGS) tech­nol­ogy back in 1998. CGS sported higher elec­tron mobil­ity: 600x amor­phous sil­i­con (a-Si) and 3x low tem­per­a­ture poly-silicon (LTPS). One of the ben­e­fits of high elec­tron mobil­ity is the pos­si­bil­ity of inte­grat­ing cir­cuitry on the glass sub­strate itself and reduc­ing the num­ber of phys­i­cal exter­nal con­nec­tions, reduc­ing the over­all size of TFT LCDs. Another advan­tage is the abil­ity to inte­grate more pix­els. The 3.5-inch IPS LCD Retina Display in the iPhone 4 is based on LTPS and sports a class-leading pixel for­mat of 960×640.

IGZO is related to CGS in that improv­ing elec­tron mobil­ity is the goal. IGZO offers 10-30x elec­tron mobil­ity com­pared to a-Si but has the poten­tial for cost reduc­tion com­pared to LTPS. On April 21, 2011 Sharp made an oxide semi­con­duc­tor announce­ment:

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd., Sharp has devel­oped and will com­mer­cial­ize a thin-film tran­sis­tor using a new mate­r­ial, InGaZnO, a world’s first. High energy per­for­mance LCD pan­els will be made pos­si­ble by down­siz­ing the tran­sis­tor and by increas­ing the light trans­mit­tance for each pixel. In addi­tion, Sharp’s unique UV2A tech­nol­ogy will achieve high dis­play qual­ity small- and medium- size LCD panels.

Smaller TFTs lead to improved light trans­mit­tance: more light passes through using the same back­light or at the same bright­ness level, back­light energy con­sump­tion is reduced. The smaller TFTs that IGZO allows can also be used for higher pixel den­sity TFT LCDs.

Sharp’s UV2A tech­nol­ogy pre­cisely aligns liq­uid crys­tals to reduce light leak­age result­ing in improved con­trast. One dis­ad­van­tage of LCDs com­pared to OLEDs is the black level: LCDs gen­er­ally show a dark grey whereas blacks on OLEDs are pure. Combine IGZO and UV2A and the pos­si­bil­ity is high for a spec­tac­u­lar mobile LCD to be man­u­fac­tured before the end of the year.