April Small Screen Summary

The April issue of Mobile Display Report has been distributed to subscribers. Probably the biggest news was the OLED TV news coming from Japan's FPD Expo event. Here, Sony announced plans to commercialize an 11" OLED TV while Toshiba Matsushita Display (TMD) said it would launch a 20.8-inch OLED TV in 2009. These announcements are significant as they represent the first public commitments to offer OLED TVs.

The benefits of OLED technology have been well documented in our publications. They are super thin, offer very low dark states and high contrast, are fast enough to avoid any motion artifacts, offer wide viewing angles and should cut power consumption in the long term. Of concern has been the lifetime of the OLED materials, particularly in the blue. This has so far limited the use of OLEDs to products that have short lifetimes.

A TV is a different animal with a lifetime measured in a decade or longer. Therefore, something has changed, or is about to change, which has given Sony and TMD reasons to think they can make an OLED TV with a long lifetime. Such details were not forthcoming from the companies, but this remains an area of investigation for us.

In addition, active matrix OLEDs, which will be used for TVs, are in the early phases of mass production (Gen 4). Making TVs that will be price competitive with mature LCDs will be challenging to say the least. What seems likely is that commercialization of ink jet printing techniques will be used for these TVs, starting down the path toward a lower cost solution.

What was startling about the announcements is that there may some strategic thinking in play here along with a bit of a leap of faith in technology. Interestingly, TMD's approach features a polymer OLED solution, which has raised some eyebrows as the small molecule approach was thought to have the lead position for most applications.

Market research firms like NanoMarkets think OLED displays will reach the level of $10.9B by 2012 and grow to $15.5B by 2014, half of which will come from mobile handsets. They see LCD growth slowing as the technology matures, with OLEDs moving in to begin replacing LCDs. While the company mentions OLED backlights, signage displays, lighting, laptops and kiosks as likely applications, TVs are not a big factor. Indeed, TVs may not be a big factor as Sony readily admits their sets will be expensive and targeted at high-end consumers.

There is a lot going on in the OLED segment and there is much more in depth coverage in the newsletter.

Other news of interest comes from Kopin, who sees a bit of a resurgence occurring in the electronic viewfinder space. Most digital cameras have used optical instead of electronic viewfinders, which use tiny microdisplays and optics to create a magnified virtual image. But the perception of the value of EVFs is now starting to persuade more camera makers to adopt EVFs.

What is the value? For one, EVFs are needed for high-zoom cameras as the optical viewfinders gets too big and expensive. Secondly, the image quality is good enough to really do some fine focusing and you get the actual image of what the camera sensor will image, which is not always the case with an optical viewfinder.

We also included a lot of coverage of alterative displays this month. This includes Sony's demo of a 19.2" FED display and news from the bi-stable display segment from players like Nemoptic, Polymer Vision, Prime View International and SiPix. After a long gestation period, activity is definitely ramping up in these displays, too.

What's new? Nemoptic has a new development kit with an HVGA (320x480) resolution panel geared toward professional and consumer e-paper applications. Polymer Vision announced it is working with UK-based Innos to establish the world's first production facility for organic semiconductor-based rollable displays with manufacturing to commence in 2007. Prime View International reports it is on track to roll out flexible electronic-paper (e-paper) displays in the middle of 2007, with plans to display its latest flexible panels at SID's U.S. event in May. Meanwhile, SiPix Imaging has attracted the interest of the world's top four cell phone makers with samples of a dynamic keypad display for mobile devices.

As we mentioned FEDs were also shown by Sony at the FPD Expo. This is a really interesting experiment by Sony, which has created a spin-off to further develop the technology. By mid 2008, Sony will take a hard look at progress and, if promising, may reabsorb the company to help push commercialization. We will have more on this and developments in the FED/SED camp, based on a lengthy SID local Chapter talk given by Professor Masayuki Nakamoto, Shizuoka University, in the next issue of Mobile Display Report.

Sony's activities in FEDs and its new conviction to OLEDs sure seems like evidence that the company is trying to regain its lost glory as the leader of the display industry, which it lost in the early days of the FPD revolution. It is rarely a dull day in the display industry.

The full table of contents can be viewed http://insightmedia.info/archive/04-07MDRTOC.php

Until next time...

Chris Chinnock
President
Insight Media

About Insight Media

Insight Media (www.insightmedia.info) is a leading publishing and consulting firm focused on the display industry. With its core team of world-class display experts, Insight Media tracks the technology, components, products, markets, applications, manufacturing and business aspects of consumer and professional display markets. The company publishes daily and monthly news and analysis as well as in-depth annual technology/market reports. It also hosts industry conferences, provides strategic and tactical consulting services and offers industry education via webinars and on-site seminars.

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