Sharp has developed a new display that will allow car makers to alter the shape of the dash screen, into many different shaped displays.
Until now, car displays were rectangular because the bezel of the display housed much of its circuitry. Now Sharp has placed that circuitry throughout the pixels of the screen itself, freeing up the possibility for multiple screen shapes.
Sharp calls it a “Free-Form Display.
It explained, “Conventional displays are rectangular because they require a minimal width for the bezel in order to accommodate the drive circuit, called the gate driver, around the perimeter of the screen’s display area. With the Free-Form Display, the gate driver’s function is dispersed throughout the pixels on the display area. This allows the bezel to be shrunk considerably, and it gives the freedom to design the LCD to match whatever shape the display area of the screen needs to be.”
The displays are still in prototype form, and Sharp hopes to start mass producing them “at the earliest possible date,” according to thenextweb.com.
Source: Sharp, thenextweb
Photo: The Verge
The writing is definitely on the wall for traditional head unit manufacturers…not that we didn’t see this coming for some time. Question is, will the 12v community realize that they need to focus on consumer messaging and proper merchandising to secure their place in the market? Today’s consumer is already in need of far more education to integrate than those of 10 years ago. It’s time to retool our approach to selling “car audio”.