At $227 per diagonal inch (in the U.S.), Sony’s XEL-1 11-inch AMOLED TV set is a combination of technological stake in the sand, early adopter’s toy, and public relations coup. And, with a lifetime that is, according to tests supervised by Barry Young at DisplaySearch, much shorter than that claimed by Sony, the XEL-1 can also be viewed as a premature delivery.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Since the XEL-1 is clearly a triumph of public relations over sound product development, I’m only inclined to give it one-and-a-half cheers. But it does look beautiful, and the enthusiastic response people have to its screen images clearly show that AMOLED-TV will be a product category to threaten both LCDs and PDPs — but only when the technology matures a bit, screen sizes grow, and prices fall.

So when will that be? At least since last October’s FPD International in Yokohama, LG Display and CMEL have had 32-inch AMOLED-TVs on their roadmaps for late 2009 or early 2010. CMEL has been showing a 25-inch prototype and Samsung has been showing a handsome 31-inch FHD prototype, although nobody, understandably, was talking about price or volume.

The media’s recent focus on Matsushita has been on its taking over Pioneer’s plasma panel research, development, and manufacturing activities and on its assuming control of IPS Alpha, the LCD-panel manufacturer jointly owned by Matsushita, Hitachi, and Toshiba. But if you looked at the corporate fine print, you could see references to Matsushita intending to do OLED development at one of IPS Alpha’s facilities.

Still, it came as a surprise yesterday when Japan’s Sankei newspaper reported Matsushita has finalized plans to mass-produce 37-inch AMOLED-TVs within 3 years. Matsushita spokesperson Akira Kadota said his company plans to sell the 37-incher for the equivalent of $1,390.

Now, $1,390 is certainly not cheap for a 37-inch TV. Today, you can buy a Sharp LC-37D64U FHD LCD-TV for $1099 on-line from J and R, or a Sony KDL-37L4000 HD LCD-TV for $889, and equivalent sets will surely be cheaper in 2011. But it’s also not crazy to expect early adopters and demanding videophiles to buy this kind of set in significant quantities at such a price.

Also yesterday, CMEL VP Peter Chen said his company anticipates the mass production of TV-use AMOLED panels in 2010 or 2011, as reported in Digitimes. The TV panels will be made at a new third production OLED line, Chan said.

And what conclusions about CMEL’s initial volume-produced product should we draw from that 25-inch prototype we’ve seen so much of? Not much. Chen said CMEL would not mass produce that size.

So real AMOLED-TVs are coming. Not rich men’s toys, but real TVs in reasonable sizes at rational price premiums. You’ll just have to wait a couple of years.