While being very undemonstrative about it, Motorola Inc has become more of a champion of beleaguered US industries cowering under the onslaught from Japan than many companies that are more vocal about their roles. Few technologies are more totally dominated by Japan Inc than flat panel displays, but Schaumberg, Illinois-based Motorola thinks that Tualatin, Oregon-based In Focus Systems Inc may have something with its technique for making cheap passive matrix displays that operate as fast as the hard-to-make active matrix ones (CI No 1,862), and it has agreed in principle to form a joint venture to put the company’s displays into production in the US. On the execution of definitive agreements, Motorola will invest $22m for a 20% stake in In Focus by buying 2.2m common shares at $10 each. The venture looks to start producing 6.5 and smaller displays by the end of 1994, initially for use in products such as projection systems and personal communications devices, at a plant to be located in the Portland, Oregon area; the plan is to expand the plant’s capacity later to produce larger format displays for the broader market. The venture will also be responsible for marketing application-specific integrated circuits made by Motorola that implement In Focus’s Active Addressing technology: the chips are expected to be in production and available worldwide by the end of 1993. The Active Adressing technique uses proprietary algorithms that intelligently distribute many small pulses to the liquid crystal diodes during the frame period where standard displays use a single large row-select pulse, and In Focus says its prototype colour display gives a video speed response time of 50mS and has a contrast ratio of 30 to one – and says it expects to be able to improve both the speed and the contrast of the screen.
