"일각에서는 이석채 전 KT 회장의 비자금 조성에 들어갔을 가능성도 조심스럽게 예측하고 있다. 2800억원이나 되는 거액의 사기 대출 과정에서 금융사도 깜빡 속아 넘어갈 정도로 관련 서류가 모두 정교하게 위조되는 등의 움직임이 있었는데도 직원 1명이 전부 했다고 하기에는 의문점이 많기 때문이다.
특히 최근 황창규 신임회장의 인사 쇄신으로 사퇴한 김성만 전 KT ENS 대표이사는 서유열 사장과 같은 '영포 라인'으로 이석채 전 회장의 측근으로 분류된다."
The following Q&A provides additional details on Corning’s Gorilla Glass and manufactured sapphire crystals.
What is Gorilla Glass?Gorilla Glass is the cover material of choice for consumer electronics device manufacturers around the world. Today, it can be found in more than 33 major brands and nearly 1,000 product models spanning more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide. Corning’s newest generation, Gorilla Glass 3 with Native Damage Resistance is chemically strengthened, lightweight, thin, transparent, versatile, highly durable and scratch resistant.
What is Sapphire glass?Actually, sapphire isn’t a glass. It is a crystalline material that can be manufactured by applying high heat and other demanding conditions to purified aluminum oxide. The physics of sapphire crystal formation make manufacturing expensive and slow.
How does sapphire compare to chemically strengthened Gorilla Glass?It is unclear if sapphire can compete with Gorilla Glass. Sapphire certainly is hard – harder to scratch than Gorilla Glass – but transmits about six percentage points less light and may introduce optical distortions. Sapphire is also 67 percent heavier than Gorilla Glass per unit volume, difficult to process (especially at the thinness of Gorilla Glass) and costs significantly more to produce. Based on Corning’s own durability tests, we believe that in normal mobile phone use, sapphire would break more easily than Gorilla Glass – especially if sapphire is used at the same thinness as Gorilla Glass.
Many device makers and consumers are concerned about the environmental effects of mobile devices. How “green” are sapphire and Gorilla Glass?Gorilla Glass uses about one one-hundredth as much energy to form as sapphire. If all the smartphones in the world used sapphire as a cover, we calculate that the incremental energy required would be the same as 2.6 million average U.S. households use annually, or 7.4 times as much energy as the Hoover Dam produces in a year.
Media reports suggest that sapphire is currently more expensive than Gorilla Glass. Can you comment?
Today, we believe that the cost to fabricate a sapphire cover – without any profit – exceeds the all-in price of Gorilla Glass to a customer by more than a factor of ten. While innovation is always possible, the basic physics of sapphire creates a high barrier for cost reduction. Forming sapphire takes over 4000 times longer than glass, and sapphire’s hardness, which provides its scratch resistance, makes it much more expensive and difficult to machine. We estimated that billions of dollars would need to be invested to create sufficient sapphire capacity for even a small percentage of mobile phones.
There are lots of rumors that sapphire will soon be introduced on a smartphone. Is this true?We have already seen some extremely expensive cell phones that use sapphire. It’s possible that sapphire covers will be used on new models, but given what we know about sapphire’s performance and economics, we do not believe that these models would be aimed at anything other than niche markets.
How is sapphire being used today other than on a few high-end smartphones?The LED lighting market is the primary growth driver for sapphire today. It is also used for some military and industrial applications, and for high-end watches and jewelry.
Does Corning manufacture sapphire?Corning is a world leader in materials science and we have a long history of working with sapphire. Today, we sell sapphire for some military applications, and in the past we manufactured sapphire tubing.
What other innovations is Corning pursuing for Gorilla Glass?We are constantly looking for ways to improve our products and to address the future needs of the industries that we serve. We have already introduced three versions of Gorilla Glass, each improving over the previous generation. Today’s Gorilla Glass 3 offers significantly improved scratch resistance and greater toughness. We achieved these benefits by re-engineering the atomic structure of the glass so if the glass does scratch, it retains its strength. We did this while continuing to offer the thinness and lightweight characteristics necessary for touch-enabled devices. We are now working on new generations of Gorilla Glass that are curved, improve bright sunlight readability, and kill germs and bacteria.
Can sapphire offer product innovation options similar to Gorilla Glass?We do not see viable paths to offer these innovations in sapphire.