NEW
YORK (AP) -- An ultra-strong glass that has been looking for a purpose
since its invention in 1962 is poised to become a multibillion-dollar
bonanza for Corning Inc.
The
159-year-old glass pioneer is ramping up production of what it calls
Gorilla glass, expecting it to be the hot new face of touch-screen
tablets and high-end TVs.
Gorilla
showed early promise in the '60s, but failed to find a commercial use,
so it's been biding its time in a hilltop research lab for almost a
half-century. It picked up its first customer in 2008 and has quickly
become a $170 million a year business as a protective layer over the
screens of 40 million-plus cell phones and other mobile devices.
Now,
the latest trend in TVs could catapult it to a billion-dollar business:
Frameless flat-screens that could be mistaken for chic glass artwork on
a living-room wall.
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 and expects to land its first deal this fall. With
production going full-tilt in Harrodsburg, Ky., it is converting part of
a second factory in Shizuoka, Japan, to fill a potential burst of
orders by year-end.
"That'll tell you something about our confidence in this," said Corning President Peter Volanakis.
Investors
are taking notice. In June, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York
raised Corning's projected share price, predicting Gorilla would be its
second biggest business by 2015.
"There's
a wide range of views on how successful this product will be," said
Deutsche Bank analyst Carter Shoop. "But I think it's safe to say that,
in aggregate, people are becoming much more bullish. It's a tremendous
opportunity. We'll have to see how consumers react."
DisplaySearch
market analyst Paul Gagnon said alternatives "obviously scratch easier,
they're thicker and heavier, but they're also cheaper." He estimates
that a sheet of Gorilla would add $30 to $60 to the cost of a set.
It
remains to be seen "whether this becomes a hit trend that propagates to
other models and sizes or remains in the confines of a premium step-up
series of products," Gagnon said.
"This
is a fashion trend, not a functional trend, and that's what makes (the
growth rate) very hard to predict," said Volanakis. "But because the
market is so large in terms of number of TVs -- and the amount of glass
per TV is so large -- that's what can move the needle pretty quickly."
Based
in western New York, Corning is the world's largest maker of glass for
liquid-crystal-display computers and TVs. High-margin LCD glass
generated the bulk of Corning's $5.4 billion in 2009 sales.
By
ramping up volume production quickly in a budding market, Corning is
pursuing a well-worn strategy designed to keep rivals from gaining
ground. Its patience is also well practiced. Executives know too well
the gulf between inspiration and application is sometimes decades-wide.
Corning
set out in the late 1950s to find a glass as strong as steel. Dubbed
Project Muscle, the effort combined heating and layering experiments and
produced a robust yet bendable material called Chemcor.
Then
in 1964, Corning devised an ingenious method called "fusion draw" to
make super-thin, unvaryingly flat glass. It pumped hot glass into a
suspended trough and allowed it to overflow and run down either side.
The glass flows then meet under the trough and fuse seamlessly into a
smooth, hanging sheet of glass.
To
make Chemcor, Corning ran the sheets through a "tempering" process that
set up internal stresses in the material. The same principle is behind
the toughness of Pyrex glass, but Chemcor was tempered in a chemical
bath, not by heat treatment.
Corning
thought Chemcor sheets created this way would be the material of choice
in car windshields, but British rival Pilkington Bros. intervened with a
far cheaper mass-production approach. And another Chemcor adaptation in
photochromic sunglasses also fizzled in the retail market.
Fusion
draw finally proved its commercial value when Japanese electronics
companies, looking for slim sheets free of alkalis that contaminate
liquid crystals, turned to Corning's soda-lime LCD glass in the 1980s.
Corning rapidly turned into the world's biggest supplier of LCD glass
for laptops and that business blossomed around 2003 when LCD technology
migrated to TVs.
In
2006, when demand surfaced for a cell phone cover glass, Corning dug
out Chemcor from its database, tweaked it for manufacturing in LCD
tanks, and renamed it Gorilla. "Initially, we were telling ourselves a
$10 million business," said researcher Ron Stewart.
With
relatively low startup costs, Gorilla should generate its first profit
this year. And now that production is back on, designers are again
exploring using it in unexpected places, like refrigerator doors, car
sunroofs and touch-screen hotel advertising.
Among
the 100-plus devices with Gorilla are Motorola Inc.'s Droid smart phone
and LG Electronics' X300 notebook. Whether Apple Inc. uses the glass in
its iPod is a much-discussed mystery since "not all our customers allow
us to say," said Jim Steiner, general manager of Corning's specialty
materials division.
Since
the Civil War, Corning has turned out a glittering array of innovations
from railroad signals to Pyrex and auto-pollution filters to optical
fiber. Allotting 10 percent of revenue to research keeps promising
projects brewing at its Sullivan Park research hub on Corning's hilly
outskirts.
Optical
fiber is another example of an invention that took a long time to come
into its own. In 1934, chemist Frank Hyde came up with a practical
method of making fused silica -- an exceptionally pure glass -- in bulk,
yet it wasn't put to use as optical fiber until the 1970s. Once there,
it helped create the Internet revolution.
In
his office lobby, Steiner showed off a 400-foot-long spool of flexible,
16-inch-wide glass that's as thin as a sheet of paper.
"Kind of like Chemcor was back in the '60s," he said. "We're not sure what we're going to do with it, but it's cool isn't it?"
Gorilla Glass
SOURCE: The Associated Press
