David Fyfe, the ex CEO of CDT who now works as a consultant for its parent company Sumitomo, gave a presentation on the OLED market at LOPE-C this week.
Speaking to the history of OLEDs, he says that LCDs have drastically closed the performance gap, perhaps fuelled by the threat of OLEDs. He cited that in 2005 he spoke to one major display company in East Asia that reported to have 1250 R&D staff on LCD and just 50 on OLED, but he thinks that is now drastically different. From his experience at CDT he reported that they and others made significant improvements with materials and processing techniques over the past decade (printing in the case of CDT), but the TFT backplanes were a major stumbling block as these were controlled mainly in East Asia. As a result, the LCD makers controlled the pace of the OLED industry.
The latest development in LCDs that close the performance gap again are LED backlit panels. These result in much thinner LCD panels. At the S.I.D. show in Seattle last week, attended by IDTechEx, Samsung demonstrate a 42" LCD panel just 2.6mm thick because of LED backlighting, and it weights just 3.6Kg.
The advantage of OLED thinness has been eroded. In addition, LED backplanes can be more efficient compared to previous versions because the LED lighting behind dark areas of the image can be dimmed locally - unavailable before.
However, despite this, Fyfe felt that the progress with OLED is now speeding up and was optimistic of its future. Last year, he reported that over $1 billion worth of OLED displays were sold. These were mainly active matrix displays and passive matrix versions are "a sideshow".
Future success for OLEDs will come from the huge success of 3D TV, where currently demand cannot keep up with supply. 3D TV ideally needs a faster switching speed where OLED is superior compared to plasma or LCD panels.
In addition, the largest display makers have made strong cases for OLEDs. At S.I.D. Samsung confirmed they are investing $2.5 billion over the next few years in OLED development. Both Samsung and Sony have said that from 2015 printing will be the main technology for large OLED flat panels. Samsung, presenting at S.I.D. anticipate that the OLED market will reach $15 billion in 2015.
For more attend : Printed Electronics USA 2010
