Corning Incorporated - Why Invest - Distinctive Capabilities

History of Innovation

For more than 170 years, we’ve been inventing new materials and category-defining products that transform industries and enhance people's lives.

Today, our purposeful commitment to RD&E – and our leadership in proprietary, highly relevant capabilities – allows us to participate in fundamental secular trends and succeed over the long term.

Recognized scientific excellence

4 National Medal of Technology Wins
15 National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees

In 2023, our RD&E investments generated more than 2,000 patents globally, bringing our total active patents to more than 13,000. These investments have been foundational to capture and extend our valuable market leading positions in the automotive and life sciences markets for 100 years, display for 80 years, telecommunications for 50 years, and mobile consumer electronics since the inception of smart devices.

Focused and Cohesive Portfolio

We’re world leaders in three core technologies – glass science (opens in new tab), ceramic science (opens in new tab), and optical physics (opens in new tab) – along with four proprietary manufacturing platforms – fusion (opens in new tab), extrusion (opens in new tab), vapor deposition (opens in new tab), and precision forming (opens in new tab). Capturing synergies among these core capabilities allows us to create breakthrough products and processes for our customers, improve the return on our innovation investment, and reduce our capital intensity.

Our capabilities are vital to progress across many industries. Today we focus on five major markets where we can offer the greatest impact, applying new combinations of our capabilities to advance important trends and capture new technology s-curves: Optical Communications (opens in new tab), Display (opens in new tab), Mobile Consumer Electronics (opens in new tab), Automotive (opens in new tab), and Life Sciences (opens in new tab).

In Optical Communications, for example, we use all of our core technologies and all of our manufacturing and engineering platforms.

We start with liquids and gases and create the world’s most optically pure material, which we draw into hair-thin fibers that transmit information at the speed of light. Our technology is critical to many applications, including broadband expansion, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

We also reapply and repurpose our capabilities across our businesses. For example, our ground-breaking fusion process is the technology behind multiple transformative products:

The world’s most pristine flat glass – which we produce in sheets twice as large as a king-size bed, as thin as a business card, and with a thickness variation of less than 20 microns – that enables the high-performance displays you rely on every day.
Visually stunning, incredibly tough Corning® Gorilla® Glass that enables today’s sleekest smartphone designs, while providing exceptional damage resistance to the scratches, bumps and drops of everyday use.
AutoGrade™ Corning Gorilla Glass that brings the smartphone experience to the driving experience, far outperforming plastic and conventional glass when it comes to durability, touch sensitivity and readability.

New combinations of our assets and capabilities enable us to deliver for customers, drive durable growth, and extend leadership in our markets.

Five Market-Access Platforms

In our five Market-Access Platforms (MAPs), we have strong competitive advantages, and we leverage those advantages to extend our market leadership. In each of our MAPs, we also capture growth by driving more Corning content in our customers’ products, expanding our total addressable market and reducing our sensitivity to economic cycles as a result. We call this our “More Corning” approach.

Five Market-Access Platforms
	Secular Trends	“More Corning” Opportunities	Competitive Differentiation
Optical Communications	Broadband expansion, 5G densification, cloud computing and artificial intelligence	Solutions that are denser, easier to install, greener and more cost-efficient	Global leader in optical fiber, cable, fiber-to-the-home, and data center solutions; only large-scale end-to-end provider of passive optical solutions
Display	Ubiquitous, lifelike displays	Larger screen sizes; innovation for advanced displays	Market, technology and cost leader in display glass; advantaged Gen 10.5 platform
Mobile Consumer Electronics	Mobile computing and device form factors, artificial intelligence, expanding applications for semiconductors	Innovation in cover material performance and design; new categories (bendable, augmented reality); key components for semiconductor lithography, process control and advanced packaging	Market leader and innovator for mobile device cover solutions as well as glass and optical materials for semiconductor lithography
Automotive	Cleaner vehicle technologies; intelligent, connected vehicles with advanced driver assistance features	$100 per car content opportunity, enabled by technical glass for displays, windows, sensors; more emissions control content per vehicle for tightening global regulations	Market leader in clean air technology; innovator in automotive technical glass and optics innovations enabling lightweight, damage-resistant glass for windows, sensors and large/curved displays
Life Sciences	Precision medicines and biologic-based therapies	Innovation in cell therapy, 3D cell culture, and greener, more efficient pharmaceutical packaging	Leader in life sciences labware, cell culture solutions, and adherent bioproduction scale-up; innovator in pharmaceutical packaging