Corning is the company that makes the famous Gorilla Glass that is used to cover the screens of the majority of mobile products including smartphones, tablets and smartwatches. The company has over 160 years of experience and they are constantly researching on how to make their products more durable and thinner at the same time, in addition to improving their performance. The company is working on glass that would be almost as scratch-resistant as sapphire and they have a few more technologies to improve the manufacturing of touchscreen displays.
Back in 2011, the company shared a glimpse of how they envision the future using glass everywhere in a video titled “A Day Made of Glass”. It showed many products that are under development such as photosensitive glass that changes its opacity, mirrors that display interactive information, thermal surfaces, transparent screens and even flexible displays. Basically, every surface of the home would be made of glass and it would provide advanced functionality and interactions. That vision looks not so distant now that Corning displayed similar technology in their CES 2016 booth.
There was a fridge with a gigantic touchscreen, pretty much like the one Samsung showcased on that same event. This would allow to display pictures and digital notes, and when it gets paired with a smartphone, it could be controlled with that device and sync the information between both devices. It could alert you if you’re running out of certain foods using RFID tags and users could even order what’s missing right from the fridge, or they can program it to order them when the last item of a certain food is taken. They also demoed an infotainment unit on a wall, composed of various 55-inch displays, so users would end up with a huge display to watch movies, play games or show their favorite photos. A table with a glass surface could be very useful in an office, as users would just have to swipe a certain document or file in order to share it with nearby users. Car consoles and store window displays were also showcased as they could also benefit from these technologies. Still, Corning is committed to building the necessary glass components while they rely on other companies to build final products with their own hardware designs and software.