We have all heard the hype about OLED displays and that they are going to offer great picture quality as well as energy efficiency in a very thin profile package. The issue at hand is whether they will be priced competitively in the market and overcome some of their shortcomings in the short term. Sharp for one is taking it seriously and just announced what they claim is the thinnest profile LCD large flat panel display and specifically notes that it is to stave off the coming of OLED into the market. We’ve been hearing about the potential for OLED for several years now and Sony, Samsung and Seiko Epson have demonstrated prototype OLED panels. Sony is placing a lot of emphasis on OLED has indicated that it will be the first out of the gate with an OLED computer monitor late in 2007 or early in 2008 and small televisions in the 11" to 27" wide range shortly after that.

Alan Brawn
Insight Media Consultant

Characteristically, Sony is not quoting a price but some industry experts think that the small monitors could cost somewhere between $800 and $1,000. It is rumored that Toshiba is expected to start selling 30-inch OLEDs in 2009. In a CNET article, Lawrence Gasman, principal analyst at Nano Markets says, "OLED TVs at the moment essentially don’t exist. If you go to an (industry) conference you’ll see some beautiful prototypes, which are very impressive, but you can’t actually buy one yet. There’s another problem: unlike LCD (liquid crystal display) and plasma, which were completely new display technologies compared with cathode ray tubes when they first debuted, OLED TVs are a variation on the ingredients and manufacturing process used to make LCD panels. The fact that it’s not a drastically new technology could mean a more difficult time gaining a foothold with consumers, particularly when the price for a new OLED TV will be so high, at least initially." According to Riddhi Patel, an analyst with iSuppli. "Any tech coming into the TV market now has to be many steps ahead of where existing plasma and LCDs are at. The technology has to be substantially better and (have) comparable prices." To me, this is where the veritable rubber meets the road. OLED displays are not (yet) superior in image quality and dynamic range.

The other major impediment is the life span of the panel itself and reliability factor. To more or less prove this point, Janice Mahon, vice president of technology commercialization for Universal Display, a well known OLED research and development company says "It’s "fair" to consider that organic materials used in OLEDs need further advances to be realistic for the TV market. The OLEDs currently used in cell phone displays are lasting 5,000 to 10,000 hours." If we look at the current crop of flat panel displays, both LCD and plasma are claiming 50,000 to 60,000 hours of life to half brightness and we just saw a report from Panasonic talking about a 100,000 hour plasma panel that is expected sometime next year. To most of us in the commercial display arena this seems like a deal breaker but Nano Markets claims the OLED TV market should be worth about $42 million in 2008, $436 million in 2009, and $1.2 billion by 2010.

The task at hand is for companies like Sony, Samsung, Universal Display, and Cambridge Display Technology to perfect their manufacturing processes and find ways to over come the obstacles that still stand in their way. It is one thing to build small OLEDS for cell phones and sub 3 inch displays that are intended for a life span of 2 years and yet another to climb the mountain of providing displays to the home and commercial markets that last 10 to 20 years of constant use and abuse. The key benefit to OLED displays is the form factor employing a series of very thin organic films that provide their own illumination when an electrical current is applied. OLED displays are "potentially" simpler to make than LCD panels mainly because there are fewer parts with no need for a separate and power consuming back light. Some report that OLEDs take one forth the power of an LCD. Another issue that you hear little about is the differential aging of the red, green and blue diodes that create the color in an OLED. They degrade at different rates, which results in a "blotchy" picture. Cambridge Display has announced some recent breakthroughs in this area in terms of increased lifespan and improved uniformity but the problems are still not yet universally solved.

Last but not least, there is the omnipresent issue of price. If we use the estimated prices on the new small Sony OLED monitors as a guide, they will sell at $800 to $1000 for a sub 20 inch display. Contrasted to that, in today’s market we can buy a 42" plasma or 40" LCD at a street price of just under $1000. This begs the question of how much the end user is willing to pay for "bleeding edge" technology that currently does little more than give us a new form factor and energy savings at the cost of panel life and peak display performance. All this being said, OLED is on the horizon and with significant investments by major players like Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, and others beginning to enter the game. Do not bet against them coming out with practical large flat panel displays based on OLED. It is only a matter of time.

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