Panasonic has revealed plans to incorporate newly developed, miniature plasma displays in telephones, and other small consumer electronics products.

The new low-voltage plasma technology will be used as plasma video displays for mobile phones to use with AT&T's recently announced "Mobile TV" service that will provide full-length television content and sporting events from major US channels, due to launch in May.

At a press event in the States, Mark Balsama, national marketing manager for Panasonic said: "I have a very exciting announcement to make..."

"For nearly a decade, Panasonic's engineers have been secretly working on a thin, lightweight low-voltage compact plasma display ... We will be able to incorporate miniature plasma displays into both consumer and business telephone products starting this fall. They will rival OLED displays for brightness, contrast and thinness, and can be manufactured for much less money."

"We'll be able to put plasma in cell phones, business phones, consumer phones, corded phones, cordless phones, and even door intercom monitors and fax machines. We will revolutionise the consumer electronics business, as Panasonic has done many times before."

Robert A. Perry, the new senior vice president of Panasonic added: "Our plasma expertise and our large-scale, efficient manufacturing will allow these new small Panasonic plasma screens to replace LCDs in many applications - gasoline pumps, automated teller machines, camera viewfinders, MP3 players, vending machines, automotive displays, digital photo frames, appliance touch screens and even the little pop-up screens on printers".

"In fact, I am pleased to announce that we will be supplying mini plasma screens to HP for an exclusive two-year period for use in their printers. We view our thin low-voltage PDP technology as a pre-emptive strike against OLED technology."

STORY UPDATE: It appears this story, released via an American press release service on 3rd April, was actually a two-days-too-late April Fool from AbleComm and is entirely untrue. We apologise to our readers for this, please feel free to send scathing comments via our "Talk" forum...