Samsung

During CES 2012, Samsung announced a 55" Super-OLED TV, with active-shutter 3D support. Samsung wouldn't reveal the model number and price yet, but it does promise it will ship the TV by Q2 or Q3 2012. The Super-OLED TV also features Samsung's new Smart TV and Smart-Interaction technologies. It includes a camera can can be controled via a remote control, voice control, motion control and face recognition.

Back in August, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung announced a new initiative to standardize active 3D glasses called the Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative. Now this initiative has launched. The wireless protocols included in this standard are RF and IR and these glasses will be compatible the XPanD 3D standard. Compatible glasses and sets will show the logo displayed below.

Twelve companies said they will support the new standard - Changhong Electric, FUNAI Electric, Hisense, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Philips, Seiko Epson, Sharp, SIM2 Multimedia, TCL, Toshiba and ViewSonic. The companies setup a test center that will verify compliance of products with the initiative's specifications.

RealD announced that Samsung Electronics decided not to make TVs that use RealD's active-switching 3D technology. Samsung says that the global economic climate dragged down consumer demand.

RealD says that the license agreement with Samsung still holds, but they are looking for other partners to commercialize their technology. The company's stock fell around 14% following the announcement.

Samsung's new series-9 monitors finally arrived in the US - the 23" S23A950D costs $544 while the 27" S27A950D costs $690. These monitors offer Full-HD, 2ms response time, a built-in 3D emitter for active-shutter glasses and 2D-to-3D conversion. Other features include D-sub, HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI-DualLink. They can come with a TV tuner, too. They also offer a beautiful 'curved design':

Back in January 2011 Samsung announced that it has formed an alliance for Active-Shutter 3D TV technology - with Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Haier and Changhong. Today we hear that Panasonic, Sony, Samsung and XpanD formed a new standard called the "Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative" - which aims to create a universal active 3D glasses standard that uses RF, Infrared and Bluetooth.

The group says it will begin producing glasses based on the standard in September, and will make it available for licensing.

There are reports that Samsung is working towards a 3D mobile phone. The 'Galaxy 3D' (tentative name) will feature dual cameras, a 4.3" glasses-free 3D LCD display (not an OLED, although Samsung is working on a 3D OLED) and Android 2.3. The phone will feature HD TV-out to connect to a 3D TV.

The reports suggest that Samsung will release this phone towards the end of 2011. This is just a rumor in the meantime, but it makes a lot of sense - obviously Samsung needs to play the 3D phone game...

The top-five panel makers (Samsung, LG Display, AUO, CMI and Sharp) are increasing 3D TV panel production as they expect 3D TV penetration to reach 10-20% by the end of 2011. In fact CMI targets 20% 3D TV shipments, AUO predicts 'more than 10%" and Samsung, LGD and Sharp predict 3D TVs to reach 10%-20% of all TV shipments.

Samsung 3D TV