Yesterday, Daniel den Engelsen (of Southeast University, Nanjing, and ABINFO, Brazil, among other affiliations) delivered a closely reasoned, highly entertaining, and exceedingly well-informed presentation at LatinDisplay 2007 here. His topic? "The Temptation of FEDs." His conclusion? That although several aspects of FEDs are tempting in principle, all who yielded to those temptations over the last 25 years failed to produce a commercially viable display and lost a lot of money - and that pattern is unlikely to change. Daan worked on FEDs at Philips and knows whereof he speaks.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Before, during, and after Daan’s talk there was lively speculation about the fate of Canon’s SED program. Unknown to most of the people engaged in those discussions, Canon had just made an announcement that probably marks the end of its SED program.

In a November 13th press release issued in Tokyo, Canon announced that its Board of Directors had agreed to acquire a majority interest of Tokki Corporation and make Tokki a consolidated subsidiary of Canon. One of Tokki’s businesses is the development, design, manufacturing and marketing of production equipment for organic LED displays (as well as thin-film solar panels).

The press release quotes Canon’s global corporation plan, launched in 2006, which says that, in addition to "securing the overwhelming number one position worldwide in all current core businesses, Canon is focusing on the launching of display operations as a new business. As one of the initiatives in these efforts, the company is diligently working to develop organic LED elements and process technologies targeting the application of an organic LED display product."

Tokki has lost money for the last three years, and is "in financially challenging circumstances," according to Canon. But Canon thinks that adding Tokki to the corporate stable will allow Canon to significantly speed up development of OLED displays, and create synergy with Canon subsidiary Canon ANELVA, which manufactures vacuum and thin-film processing equipment.

Tokki has agreed to Canon’s tender offer, and the two companies signed a capital alliance agreement on the 13th.

In past discussions of displays by Canon, it was SED that was front and center. In Wednesday’s release, SED wasn’t even mentioned. Talk about going out with a whimper. But this whimper is long overdue.

As far as OLEDs are concerned, at least we know it’s possible to make them in quantity, unlike SEDs. Whether Canon can make and sell a competitive product remains to be seen, but we can be sure Canon Chairman and CEO Fujio Mitarai will not be satisfied with making 2-inch cell-phone displays. His dream for SEDs was to include them in Canon-branded TV sets. The display technology may have changed, but I will bet you a martini to a peanut that Mitarai-san’s dream of a Canon TV has not.

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