Qualcomm has indicated that its mirasol display technology is not ready to see the light of day yet.

Qualcomm told the Mobilize conference that the technology which should have been in the shops this year now won't ship until early 2011, the company mentioned to GigaOM. The chipmaker is yet to say why it has had to delay the technology's release although it is fairly radical and probably not been fully backed yet.

The technology has a lot of promise. Mirasol works based on the same principles as the colour of a butterfly's wings, which use interference with refracted light to generate certain colours while blocking others. It will be super-cool as it can provide the extreme low power of an e-paper display but with the expected colour and much faster update rates.

Eventually mirasol should be fast enough to manage full-speed video and usual computing tasks. However in the short term it was expected to be used for e-readers and tablets.