Ron, It appears to me by everything that I have read that this tech has a disadvantage on larger screen sizes.
Yes. Basicly it's the same problem large LCD panels have - have to wire each pixel. This can be achieved with good yields and reasonable, even low costs, manufacturing LCoS chips with active backplane but is not at all cheap as the LCoS display grows and density of active components becomes less. A batch gives lots of chips but not very many large area displays and the investment for them is very large.
I think you ask the right question:
How easily could OLEDs move into the 50" or
better screen sizes while keeping their quality and price competitive once it has developed?
New manufacturing technology, which may be scaled up relatively easily, is required and, it appears, is being developed at speed.
Universal Display Corporation [PANL], for example, has filed patents regarding inkjet printing OLEDS, a new vapour deposition process for organics, and a nanometer scale stamping process.
The object is to make future display tech on a continuous basis. This, in the current buzzword of the industry is roll-to-roll manufacturing - the plastic substrate is coated, printed, stamped, laminated, etc, in a continuous process and the finished display is cut off the roll at the end.
I don't think my assumption this can be done is unreasonable because PANL, Phillips, and others, have already produced flexible OLED displays on plastic and there is a great deal of industry interest (see:
sid.org or do a Google search for 'oled on plastic').
Here is where my leap of faith is operative: If they can do this with an 8" or 17" flat panel display, they can do it with a 60" one. The analogy is to printing a tabloid as to a broadsheet newspaper - the technology is the same but bigger. <g>
I think the answer is OLEDs could keep their price and quality as they move to bigger size more easily than competing technology.
(I think the signal that the technology is going to arrive in a big way will be when some one announces they can continuously (as opposed to batch) produce a TFT backplane).
The first applications will be/are in small things, phones, PDAs, laptops. I should think interest in the tech will really increase once it's used in laptops because the saving in weight and power accompanied by significant improvement in appearance and performance will inspire public interest in further applications - desktop monitors, TVs, wall hangings.
The first commercial applications arrive this year in small forms as manufacturers get experience with the basic technology. Usually new technology products start out with investors' high expectations but the gang buster applications don't appear quickly and folk lose interest and then the exciting products and applications catch them by surprise - adoption starts very slowly but accelerates; curve looks like a hockey stick. - real flat for a long time..
Are we better off looking for technologies that already exist that can be made better?
Possibly, but I don't think, long term, that LCoS can be competitive with OLEDS because the basic manufacturing process of the latter is ultimately going to be cheaper and the product better. Ritek, the big Taiwanese LCD display manufacturer seems to think so:
ritdisplay.com
Ritek seems to hedging a bit as to how soon active matrix OLED displays might appear:
Although Sony has developed 13" full
color OLED display at 800x600 VGA resolution, there are still some
technical issues to solve. It may have chance for mass production
in 2003, targeting TV and CRT of PC markets.
My guess is Sony would like to put an OLED screen on its Viao [sp?] laptop ASP.
Could LCoS be more easily adapted to what the wants of the consumer are? If you could take my 65" HD
RPTV and make it about 200lbs lighter, 10" narrower, and allow me to see it on any angle I would take
one for each room of my house.
I'm sure LcoS projection TVs can be made lighter and thinner but I don't think there is any way they will be plastic, have a picture an order better, and be as thick as a dime.. That's the promise OLED technology holds.
Where will the profit be?
I'm not sure but the display business is huge. It's likely OLEDs will be ubiquitous in any portable application - phones, PDAs, gameboys, laptops - and, I expect, eventually for computer monitors and TVs, large and small.
A market starting from essentially nothing will have fantastic growth rates at the start. This could have quite an effect on a small 'pure play' company. Not many of those publicly traded.
PDAs and game devices with really hot screens and video would be great sellers, I think.
I note major chemical companies, DuPont, Bayer, PPG, have taken a interest. Both PANL and CDT have negotiated favourable terms with chemical companies as exclusive resellers of OLED materials. They and Kodak have serious IP they can licence. Ritdisplay observes display manufacturers have to either develop or buy new display tech and manufacturing systems and smaller businesses will have to buy, I think.
Phillips is one of the world's largest display manufacturers and is heavily involved but it's not a 'pure play'.
The display market has recently picked up and display makers will have money to spend. Ritek is a public company but just how their shareholders will participate in the Ritdisplay venture isn't clear to me and it's not N American. Neither is Samsung.
Kodak is obviously something to look at. I haven't started on it because of its size and complexity, it's had difficulties lately but a whole new business area that allows the company another way into digital imagery could be vitalizing. I have to examine it.
Possible profits:OLED materials, IP, new manufacturing technology, possibly also hand held devices with hot displays, auto parts and possibly even some display manufacturers.
To what degree would good displays help development of 3G?
This is all I can think of right now. The four URLs below: the last two are interesting in terms of manufacturing problems.
spectrum.ieee.org
eetimes.com
flexics.com
vitexsys.com |
