Samsung uneviled a laptop at CES 2010 with a 14 inch transparent OLED display; while fascinating to look at, a transparent display serves no useful purpose in a laptop today.  Outside of the laptop world transparent displays could make their way into a number of real world applications.  The movie Avatar provided a glimpse into the future of transparent display technology and their applications as did Minority Report in 2002. 

Samsung has not released a lot of details about the laptop and its display, but they might actually produce the laptop for sale within the next 12 months.  The OLED display is up to 40 percent transparent and consumes 20 to 40 percent less power than an equivalent size LCD display.  The display’s resolution is a mere 960 x 540 but has a 100,000:1 static contrast ratio.  Samsung should look to increase the resolution for production versions as the Nexus One (Google Mobile Phone with Android 2.1) already has a 800 x 480 OLED in a much smaller 3.7 inch display.

Some possible real world applications include:

Goggles that display vital information/statistics for things like skiing

Military goggles similar to the commercials for the US Air Force, and possibly something like Iron Man’s helmet with an interactive heads up display (HUD).

Automobile HUD with GPS maps, car information such as velocity, MPG, etc.  This type of technology would prevent people from having to take their eyes off the road to look at things like their GPS device.

There are a lot of other HUD type applications.

Holograms or possibly better 3D effects with polarizing glasses.

Post your ideas for transparent displays.