The Foldable Computer Screen: Invented in… Holland!
Written on January 21, 2008 – 9:29 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
What do the CD-Rom, DVD, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have in common? They were all invented in The Netherlands. Wi-Fi was invented by Vic Hayes, the CD-Rom and DVD by Philips and Bluetooth by Jaap Haartsen. And now they invented the foldable phone.
Polymer Vision, a company started within Philips and recently spun off, has just announced a 5-inch (13-cm) foldable LCD screen to be used in a mobile phone. They beat the iPhone and Amazon Kindle with this technology that has been predicted many times before but up till now was little more than a fantasy. But now the foldable phone is here and it is called the ‘Readius’.
A prototype of the Readius was shown two years ago and is now being produced so it will be avilable in stores in the second quarter of 2008. Karl McGoldrick, the CEO of Polymer Vision said “We are taking e-reading and bringing it to the mobile phone.”. How much this will cost is unclear but likely more than your average phone. Within a few years McGoldrick hopes to be able to offer a screen in full color that will be able to show streaming video.
The Readius won’t have a keyboard at first and will act merely as a reading device with built-in phone. You will have to sync the device to your home computer to get email settings, ebooks and websites which you will then be able to read and interact with using the devices 8 keys. No iPhone-like touchscreen capabilities for now.
It will be interesting to see if an relatively unknown company from a small country in Europe can compete with Apple, Nokia and even Microsoft just by being innovative in one particular area: a folding screen.
At first I was pessimistic about their prospects but Philips, which still has a 25% stake in the company, has been very successful with the CD-Rom and DVD and numerous other products and technologies in the past and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were invented in The Netherlands too. So you never know…
A real and live demo of a working Readius:
I hope you like that post!
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
By Davied on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
Duidelijker filmpje, hoewel zonder geluid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmaX8owAsfM.
By Roy Tomeij on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
Don’t forget the “compact audio cassette” (the regular tapes we all know) by Philips :)
By Luigi Cappel on Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
Zo hoe is het kwaliteit. Het is niet echt duidelijk in de videoclip. Ik ben op zoek voor een niuew eBook Reader voor een van mijn zaken.
By Josh on Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
That’s interesting, I thought that wi-fi was invented in Australia…
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
Josh: From WikiPedia: The precursor to Wi-Fi was invented in 1991 by NCR Corporation/AT&T (later Lucent & Agere Systems) in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. It was initially intended for cashier systems; the first wireless products were brought on the market under the name WaveLAN with speeds of 1 Mbit/s to 2 Mbit/s. Vic Hayes, who held the chair of IEEE 802.11 for 10 years and has been named the ‘father of Wi-Fi,’ was involved in designing standards such as IEEE 802.11b, and 802.11a.
By Critic on Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
Well, you pranked on me.
If I press your “digg” button (on your homepage), I end up digging some other article. Not cool. :(
If I press your “digg” button on this comments page, it looks ok.
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
@Critic: yeah I noticed the same thing. It isn’t a feature but a bug. And not in our code but in the Digg script. I have no idea how to fix, or even replicate, the problem…
By Travis Choma on Jan 26, 2008 | Reply
Saw this come across my feeds today. It’s a patent filed by Motorola for a foldable, rollable screen. http://tinyurl.com/37juh7
I hope the Dutch team has already filed their patent claim!
By Tijs Teulings on Jan 27, 2008 | Reply
I do hope they’ll license the tech instead of opt for making their own devices cause thats one ugly apparatus.