Sharp is close to a breakthrough in LCD technology that can switch between displaying 2D and 3D images.

Mikio Katayama, general manager of Sharp's mobile LCD group, told news agency Reuters that the firm's Oxford-based laboratory has spent 10 years developing the technology to a standard and price that is commercially viable.

Although price remains an issue, with the new screens likely to cost up to half as much again as current TFT technology, volume production could start within the next few months.

The first products, probably PDAs and handheld games players, are scheduled for launch early next year, although next-generation TVs are the long-term target.

By this time the price should have come down making the screens only about 20 per cent more expensive to produce and buy than current TFTs.

Sharp believes that, in the same way that black and white TVs switched to colour, displays will switch to 3D.

The electronics firm's main breakthrough is allowing users to switch easily between 2D and 3D without losing image resolution.

Sharp said this works by using a variation on an established technique called the 'parallax barrier' which controls the path of light to each eye, so that each receives a slightly different image resulting in a 3D effect.

Sharp's switch can make this barrier transparent, removing the 3D effect so that the user sees a 2D image once more.

But the firm still has work to do. Currently, the 3D images can only be viewed from certain angles and distances, and Sharp has warned that it does not expect most of these glitches to be ironed out for several years.