It came and went with not much fanfare, but according to Sr. Staff writer Sinobu Takeda at Nikkei Net in Japan, the display world is again engaged in an all out technology war declared by Sony with its announcement to mass produce OLED displays by the end of this year-and followed up with a JV announcement from Toshiba / Matsushita.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
Projection Monthly

Takeda notes that it was just about 10 years ago, in 1998, that Sharp announced its commitment to invest heavily in LCD technology, with the statement from then president, Katsuhiko Machida to move all TV production to LCD by "the early 21st. century." The investment and timing couldn’t have been better as Sharp caught the HD - DTV transition wave just as new high volume fabs were coming on-line. The rest is a history of continued investment in LCD fabs, and Sharp recorded its largest group operating profit of $1.5B in its most recent fiscal year ending this past March. That engine is not going to stop anytime soon. Sharp will invest another $4.3B in LCD capex spending by 2008.

In the meantime, Sony seemed to be fat and happy making CRT TVs, when it suddenly found itself missing the LCD / DTV boat. It was forced to go the difficult (but successful) path of partnering with Korean rival Samsung to form the S-LCD joint venture based on Samsung LCD technology with main production facilities located not in Japan, but Korea.

Now in an effort not to repeat the same mistake, and to reclaim the glory days of Sony TV technology dominance, the company is betting on the next generation technology OLED-with the promise of ultra-thin displays, low power, high (really high) contrast, fast (really fast) response times, no backlight, and the list goes on.

To affect the strategy, Sony started a 50-50 joint venture with Toyota Industries Corp. called ST Liquid Crystal Display Corp. that will produce the 11-inch displays the company hopes to sell in the $400 to $800 range. Production will begin in limited quantities of around 1000 units/month. The idea is to get production up and running to inspire equipment manufacturers and component suppliers to kick-start the industry.

According to Nikkei reports, the company claims to be using a process that transfers luminescent pigments, in a style "akin to laser printing" that also leverages existing manufacturing equipment.

Other Japan giants are in the OLED game as well. Toshiba and Matsushita formed their own JV with a 2009 target date for a 20.8-inch display.

All this of course is dependent on their ability to overcome the barriers keeping the technology from large size mass production in the past. Currently, the limited life span of the displays is better suited to smaller, portable products than a home TV set, which is used for 10 years or more.

While some analysts are on record as giving OLED technology 4 to 5 years before mass adoption. This seems like a reasonable number, thinking back to LCD-TV adoption, from the 1998 first commitment by Sharp to 2003 when LCD-TVs really began to gain traction in the market.