60-Year-Old Glass Technology Finds Its Market 197
In the 1950s, Corning developed a glass product for which it has been trying to find a market ever since. What is now being called "Gorilla Glass" is currently worth $170M/yr. and is poised to quadruple (potentially) in the next year or two. Gorilla Glass is used on many smartphones including Motorola's Droid. ("Whether Apple Inc. uses the glass in its iPod is a much-discussed mystery since 'not all our customers allow us to say,' said [the] general manager of Corning's specialty materials division.") "Because Gorilla is very hard to break, dent or scratch, Corning is betting it will be the glass of choice as TV-set manufacturers dispense with protective rims or bezels for their sets, in search of an elegant look. Gorilla is two to three times stronger than chemically strengthened versions of ordinary soda-lime glass, even when just half as thick, company scientists say. Its strength also means Gorilla can be thinner than a dime, saving on weight and shipping costs. Corning is in talks with Asian manufacturers to bring Gorilla to the TV market in early 2011..." The Christian Science Monitor elaborates on the theme of job growth outside the US, as Corning plans to invest several hundred million dollars to retrofit an LCD plant in Shizuoka, Japan to manufacture the glass. The company will also expand the workforce in the Kentucky plant that now manufactures Gorilla Glass.
Re:60 years? (Score:3, Funny)
They needed to wait 60 years to measure the exact flow rate of this glass - you wouldn't want the bottom of your TV screen to go all wavy after a couple of years.
Ha! So apple DOES use it (Score:4, Funny)
("Whether Apple Inc. uses the glass in its iPod is a much-discussed mystery since 'not all our customers allow us to say,' said [the] general manager of Corning's specialty materials division.")
Does Apple use the glass? I can't tell you. Because when they started using it they told us we couldn't tell anyone.
muahahah
Re:Ha! So apple DOES use it (Score:5, Funny)
Scotty, Anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
How has nobody commented on the transparent-aluminum-like properties of this so-called "glass"?
wait... what? (Score:5, Funny)
since when is 1962 in the 50s? rounding error?
Re:60 years? (Score:5, Funny)
I am surprised, though, that corning never managed to sell any serious quantity as a structural material. Glass-coated skyscrapers have been considered quite stylish for decades, and I'd imagine that "resists birdstrike, rocks, wind forces, and idiots leaning against the windows just as well as ordinary glass, at 20% the weight" would be a selling point.
Maybe the manufacturing process grows exponentially beyond a certain, very small, size; making it only useful for the tiniest of skyscrapers, where highly paid squirrels take important decisions from their very high offices with Central Park views.
There are not as many of such clients as you might think.
Re:60 years? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously they did find a market for it, albeit a small one, since there's a plant in Kentucky that manufactures it. I think the point is that the market for it is about to expand significantly.
Why didn't cell phone makers use it before? Simple - regular chemically-enhanced soda-lime glass is cheaper, and manufacturers used bezels to protect the edges, so it worked fine. The cost of LCDs was already high, so I doubt manufacturers felt much need to add sexy by dropping the bezel, given that many people were impressed enough with the concept of it being flat and lightweight compared to their CRT. And the cell market has, until recently, been mostly comprised of low-end feature phones that cell carriers can give away for free. Now people tend to want smart phones, and they have to look good, and they'll drop hundreds of dollars AND commit to a 3-year contract to get the latest shiny. So a few extra bucks to make 'em a little shinier will move more units, more quickly.
Now everyone wants to go exposed-edge because bezels are apparently now the work of the devil (his other name is Bezelbub, dont'cha know), I heard it from Pope Steve so it must be true! So it's worth spending the extra on Gorilla Glass so they don't have users complaining that their cell phones shatter when gripped and cause shards of glass to fly out of the remains of the screen and slice their jugulars wide open, which might interrupt their call when the conductive blood touches the antenna. If you think sweaty hands are bad, wait until you see the signal drop from blood-covered hands.
Re:wait... what? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:thinner than a dime (Score:2, Funny)
Damn it I need precise measurements!
It's less than 272,000 beard seconds thick.
Christian Science Monitor (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe it's just their name, but anytime I see the "Christian Science Monitor" publish anything relating to science, I have to find a second source to verify they're not making it up.
Re:60 years? (Score:2, Funny)
He had to, he saw a 1/2-ton piece of glass falli