Few doubt that LCDs rule the display world from cell phones to large-sized TVs. The technology has vanquished all comers and even entrenched technologies in its bid for hegemony. But challengers remain in the wings, ready to unseat the reigning king.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

Japan led the LCD revolution, but the mass production lead is now shared with Korea, Taiwan and China. While Japan still supplies many of the key components and materials, even this will be compromised in short order.

So what are the Japanese to do? Find new display technologies to champion, apparently. For bigger screens, FEDs are in contention as are OLEDs, but even SED might make a come back.

In the last few days, we have seen advancements on all these fronts. For example, Field Emission Technologies, which is partly owned by Sony, says it is planning to begin mass production of 26-inch FED panels by the end of 2009. FEDs offer flat CRT-like performance, but have proved devilishly hard to mass-produce (remember how much money Sony lost in its Candescent FED venture?). But FET claims to have a way to actually get there this time.

In the approach pioneered by Pixtech and Motorola, tiny cone emitters, called Spindt cathodes, were constructed to generate electrons to energize a phosphor. FET uses these same Spindt structures, but instead of forming one Spindt cathode per pixel, it fabricates 1400 per pixel. This overcomes the uniformity problems that resulted from the former approach, while also improving lifetime and lowering currents. In addition, the company developed transparent insulating spacers to maintain the proper gap.

To help meet its mass-production deadline, FET will acquire Pioneer’s Kagoshima plant by the end of 2008 and will invest from $183 million to $274 million in Gen4 manufacturing equipment. It will target the high-end reference monitor market to start.

News about SED also surfaced this week regarding the patent lawsuit between Canon and Nano-Proprietary. Apparently, the US Court of Appeals issued a ruling in favor of Canon, in part reversing the rulings of the district court.

At issue was whether the SED technology license granted to Canon by Nano-Proprietary was valid. The validity came into question when Canon formed a joint venture agreement with Toshiba to commercialize SED technology. The initial ruling favored Nano-Proprietary, which contended the license was violated with the JV, but the Appeals court said the JV license was ok. Does this mean SED has new life? Not necessarily.

But the technology most likely to unseat LCD is OLED. Currently, there is much interest in the ability of OLED to scale to the sizes needed to compete with LCDs in the monitor and TV segments.

This week we learned that Panasonic is confirming its intentions to mass-produce OLED TVs. According to industry reports, the company intends to use its R&D center in Kyoto to make 20-inch prototype OLED TVs by early 2009. Then, a new $2.8B plant would start production in 2010, with mass production of 40-inch OLED TVs scheduled for 2011.

And, according to a report in Digitimes, AU Optronics (AUO) is considering re-opening its OLED production line, which it shut down in 2006. AUO was making small-sized OLEDs, but has continued development efforts with larger-sized substrates. No time frame was set, but it is yet another indicator of growing interest.

Can any of these technologies really displace LCDs in the TV market? OLEDs have the best chance, but it is likely to be some time before LCD panel, monitor and TV makers feel threatened. But on the other hand, OLED may be a way for non-competitive LCD fabs to retool old plants and get back in the game. Stay tuned.