Five major Japanese companies have recently banded together to form the 3D Consortium whose aim is to enhance the potential market for 3D by working to develop and expand I/O devices for 3D displays, improve the environment for the development and distribution of 3D content, and promote the commercial exploitation of this new technology in a wide variety of application areas.

The five steering members of the Consortium are:
Itochu Corporation (Tokyo; Uichiro Niwa, President & CEO)
NTT DATA Corporation (Tokyo; Toshiharu Aoki, President & CEO)
SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. (Osaka; Yukinori Kuwano, President & COO)
Sharp Corporation (Osaka; Katsuhiko Machida, President)
Sony Corporation (Tokyo; Kunitake Ando, President & COO)

The 3D Consortium is composed of 70 companies (as of March 4) including 65 standard-member companies that include the five steering members, hardware manufacturers, software vendors, content vendors, content providers, system integrators, video production houses, broadcasters, academic organizations and other interested parties. In the future, with the goal of encouraging the growth and development of a full-fledged market for 3D applications and products, the Consortium plans to implement an extensive educational campaign intended to promote the development and adoption of 3D in hardware areas such as manufacturing I/O devices and software fields such as developing content.

Compared to conventional planar (2D) displays, stereographic (3D) displays are not only capable of realistically depicting the positional relationships of objects in space, but Consortium members are also convinced that this ground-breaking technology will open up new worlds of video imaging that will provide a realistic sense of immediacy never before possible. A variety of usage scenarios are being envisioned in fields as wide-ranging as industrial design including CAD, medical, educational, entertainment, advertising/PR, broadcasting, electronic books, and more.

To deal with a number of specific issues, subcommittees are being established within the Consortium to discuss issues such as spreading image formats appropriate to various applications and I/O devices, and developing guidelines and authoring tools for creating content. In the future, the Consortium will not limit its activities to Japan, but will expand its efforts globally into various fields, and plans to aggressively promote educational activities to encourage the widespread application and expansion of 3D. The ultimate goal is to generate an unprecedented new industry and market for 3D technology.

Overview of the 3D Consortium (as of March 4, 2003)

Name

3D Consortium

Date of Founding

March 4, 2003

Steering Members (in alphabetical order)

Itochu Corporation
NTT DATA Corporation
SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation

Officers

Chairman	Mikio Katayama	Group General Manager, Mobile Liquid Crystal Display Group, Sharp
Vice Chairman	Kenji Torasawa	General Manager, Digital Systems Laboratories, Technical Development Group, SANYO Electric
Vice Chairman	Keiichiro Shimada	President, Vaio Notebook Computer Company, Mobile Network Company, Sony
Comptroller	Haruhiko Katoh	Division General Manager, Media Service Division, Business Development Group, NTT DATA

Consortium Business Office

Digi-Book Japan Inc.
1-3-6 Nishi-Kanda Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Tel: +81-3-5283-8640
E-mail: jimmukyoku@3dc.gr.jp