2010: The Year OLED TV Makes Contact?

[Woochifer]

OLED has been touted for years as one of those magic bullet technologies that will eventually render all existing TV technologies obsolete. Because all current TV technologies have major inherent shortcomings of some kind, it leaves the market open to a new technology that overcomes these existing limitations.

The promise of OLED technology is that it can deliver TVs that are thinner, lighter, and more energy efficient than anything currently on the market, with superior picture quality and performance. And because the screens are less complex than LCDs, OLED panels can eventually be manufactured at a lower cost. Nice concept, but it remains something off in the future.

Up to this point, OLED has been the HDTV equivalent of vaporware -- the only model currently on the market is an 11" portable model by Sony that sells for $2,500. Last year's CES had some larger demo models between 20" and 27" from Samsung and Sony, which raised speculation that production models were just around the corner. Fast forward to this year, the CES OLED demos presented some larger demo models, but no word on when production models would come out.

A BUSY WEEK
But, now it looks like things are starting to heat up, with some of the big players more actively competing to introduce larger sized OLED TVs next year. Just this week, lots of announcements.

First off, Panasonic announced a partnership with Sumitomo Chemical in which they claim to have resolved some of the current longevity and performance issues with OLED, and outlined a timetable in which they will have jointly developed 40" OLED TVs on the market before the end of 2010. Panasonic had previously been tight-lipped about its OLED plans, but they now seem determined to be first to market with OLED TVs in this screen size. The linked article speculates that Panasonic is looking to transition directly from plasma to OLED, and bypass large format LCDs altogether, which gives them incentive to push harder on advancing OLED tech.

Also this week, Samsung and LG announced an OLED R&D joint venture. This is on top of the joint venture that LG had already inked last month with OLED pioneer Kodak. These Korean electronics giants are fierce competitors on the LCD and plasma side, and both have been actively developing OLED TVs independently. A joint venture would potentially accelerate the pace of development. Samsung displayed a 40" demo model late last year, and there are rumors that they will have a 27" production model out sometime this year. LG previously announced that they would have a 32" OLED TV out in 2010.

Despite being first to market with a production OLED TV, there has been growing speculation about Sony's mixed signals on OLED. They've displayed 27" prototypes for more than a year, but announced nothing new. This week, it seems that these rumors (and presumably the newly announced development activity by competitors) prodded Sony to respond that they will "steadily cultivate" OLED and that nothing about their plans has changed. Home Theatre Choice indicated that Sony will release a 20" OLED model in September.

So, it looks like the race is on and manufacturers are targeting 2010 as the starting point for OLED. Even though large format OLED screens are poised to reach market soon, it remains to be seen whether OLED lives up to the hype. Early reports indicate that OLED has been hung up by short screen life, issues with color accuracy, and issues with production yields. But, with these rapid-fire announcements this week, it seems that manufacturers are confident that they can at least minimize these lingering issues by the time their initial models come out.