Corning Incorporated, creators of the notorious scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass for smartphones and tablets, has today announced the first shipments of second-generation Corning Gorilla Glass 2 to key device partners who plan to utilize the glass in new consumer electronics scheduled to be launched throughout 2012.

"Since we launched Gorilla Glass 2 last month at CES 2012, we’ve qualified the glass with more than half of our current customers, and have shipped our first orders to customers who plan to start production and release product in Q1 this year," said David R. Velasquez, global director, Marketing and Commercial Operations at Corning.

The company's second-generation alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass has been engineered with up to 20-percent reduction in cover glass thickness without sacrificing strength, ridigity or damage-resistance. As the world's most widely-deployed strengthened cover glass, Corning is proud to admit that is is used by more than 30 major mobile consumer electronics brands and has been implemented in over 600 products, spanning over 600 million units worldwide.

The new Gorilla Glass 2 is being demonstrated today at the Pepcom event during Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.