Financial

MasterImage 3D announced today that it has received a $15 million investment from Samsung Ventures. The company is focused on 3D - for cinemas (with over 60 installations), mobile displays and 3D camera ASICs. We're guessing that Samsung is more interested in the glasses-free handset displays and cameras than the cinema 3D technology...

This is great news for the company. We interviewed their CEO in December 2010, and we're hoping to hear more from them soon.

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has approved subsidies totaling NT$600 million ($20 million) - which will go into two projects, one of them Delta Electronics' projector-based 3D displays.

Delta are developing a auto-stereoscopic (glasses-free) 3D display that uses multiple LED projectors that are used to create high-resolution, multiple-viewing-angle 3D images.

Samsung Electronics' LCD Division president, Jang Won-gi said that Samsung plans to introduce better active-shutter 3D display panels next year, and also reduce costs. They expect to sell at least 10 million units: 70% of the total market (which Samsung estimates to be 15 million units). Samsung also plans to introduce a low-cost 3D TV with 120Hz panels next year (as opposed to today's 240Hz ones).

In the second quarter of 2010, Samsung sold 500,000 3D TVs, and their market share in the US was 88%. Samsung are now offering a 3D TV holiday deal: buy a Samsung 3D TV (PNC7000, PNC8000, C7000 or C8000) and get a BD-C5900 3D Blu-ray player and a 3D starter kit. Here are the full details over at Amazon.com, the deal is valid till December 4th.

AU Optronics has developed a auto-stereoscopic (glasses-free) 3D panels (15.6" Full-HD and 10.1" WXGA) that are deadzone-free. AUO is using a lenticular-lens design combined with SuperD's eye-tracking system. AUO is targeting notebooks and tablets for the displays. Eye-tracking means that only one user will be able to view the 3D image, though.

AUO also announced that it will invest $7.7 million in SuperD (and will get 10% of its shares).

Sensio posted their Q2 2010 financial results. They say that revenues tripled over the first quarter ($631,547, up from $210,161). The loss was $408,154: down from a $453,462 in Q2 2009.

president and CEO Nicholas Routhier says that "The FIFA World Cup gave Sensio excellent exposure, enabling us to generate a substantial increase in revenues in the first quarter. On the infrastructure side, we continued our strategy of increasing our presence throughout the supply chain, signing license agreements for integration into chips destined both for production and home entertainment products"

A couple of days ago we reported that LG plans to launch the 31" OLED 3D TV in 2011 - and today we learned that they plan to do so in March 2011. The price will be around $9000 (!). We also learned that the TV uses polarized glasses and not active-shutter as we assumed before.

Engadget's team saw the TV, and loves it: "We promised ourselves it would just be a quick look ... three hours later we found ourselves still planted in the same spot, a small trickle of drool dripping all over our camera gear". They said that the 3D images were "surprisingly sharp".

via OLED-Info

NPD Group reports that in February-May, Americans have spent over $55 million on 3D-enabled TVs and Blu-ray players. The new TVs are enjoying steady growth. According to NPD, the biggest problem that consumers have is not having enough glasses to accommodate all viewers. Another big problem is "looking silly".

Via HotHardware