LG Sees OLED TVs Going ‘Mainstream’ By 2015, Conference Told

SAN FRANCISCO -- LG is eyeing a threefold price premium for OLED TVs over high-end LCD in 2013, a 1.5x price differential in 2015 and a crossover point for the two display technologies in 2017, James Lee, research fellow at LG Display, said at the OLEDs World Summit Tuesday. The company plans a 55-inch OLED TV for 2012 and sees design differentiation defining the market in 2013, he said.

By 2015, the OLED market will have gone “mainstream,” Lee said. Calling OLED the “next premium TV,” he said the upcoming model with be “eco-friendly,” interactive, offer “superb 2D and 3D,” high black level, wide viewing angle and low power consumption. Connectivity will include home automation features, he said. The primary challenge for large-screen OLED TV is cost, Lee said.

Earlier, Gary Mandle, Sony senior product manager, said his company, despite having brought the first OLED TV to market in 2008, was focusing its OLED efforts for now on the professional market. Sony introduced a flagship 1920 x 1080 25-inch OLED model in May that sells for $26,000 and a 17-inch version for $17,000. A mid-level version sells for $14,000 and the 11-inch version for $11,000. General-use Sony models, also for the pro market and introduced in August, are $6,100, $4,100 and $2,700, Handle said. The TVs vary in panel grading, with the top model boasting no dead pixels, uniformity across the screen within three spaces of X and Y, and proprietary processors, he said. Despite the significant price reduction over a 3-month period, Sony is not setting its sights on the consumer market, Mandle said. “We made that first $200 million investment in the 8 Gen plant to get us to a 25-inch,” he said. “But we see the cost going to larger panels as prohibitive right now. We don’t think we can get a TV within a reasonable price so we're going to concentrate for now on the professional market and save our pennies."

"We're just beginning to see the OLED industry hit its stride,” said Barry Young, managing director of the OLED Association, at the opening session Monday. Young said more than 100 companies are now involved in OLEDs, along with universities and labs, and “it’s a real industry now.” Revenue for OLED displays hit $1 billion in 2010 and is projected to reach $3 billion this year, “not counting the lighting industry,” Young said.

But nearly 4 years after Sony grabbed headlines at CES for introducing the $2,500 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV, smartphone displays, not TVs, are driving the billion-dollar OLED industry. Sony’s XEL-1 has exited the consumer market, along with LG’s 15-inch model that didn’t make it stateside despite a CES splash in 2009 with a vow from LG to move into mass production for U.S. introduction the following summer. Now, LG’s talk of a 40- or 55-inch AMOLED (active-matrix OLED) TV for 2012 or 2013 looks “pretty real right now,” Young said.

Some industry observers are getting antsy about OLED’s prospects, however, as LCD builds on its head start. Norman Bardsley, president of Bardsley Consulting, referred to early forecasts that Sony OLED would be commercialized within 5 years. “What’s the level of confidence that we're getting any closer than 5 years and that that five years won’t move out?” he said. By 2016, “when we've got LCDs that have continued another 5 years of progress and have field sequential color, what’s going to sell an OLED TV?” he asked.

Young cited professional editors who have chosen Sony’s OLED TVs over LCD or plasma for their work. He said in consumers’ and the media’s limited response to Sony or LG TVs, they've shown an appreciation for performance of the fledgling display technology. He blamed the industry for creating the expectation “that they'd be here quickly.” Sony’s OLED TV “was built on an R&D line” and LG’s 15-inch OLED was built on a pilot line, he said. “They never really intended to demonstrate that they knew how to manufacture it cost effectively,” he said. That won’t happen “until we see Gen 8,” he said, adding that Samsung and LG are spending “a lot of money to bring Gen 8 to fruition.” The Korean companies wouldn’t be building Gen 8 plants or starting mass production in the first or second year “until it’s proven out and the yields come up,” he said, saying LCD went through the same kind of manufacturing history from 1990-2005. “You'll have to be a bit patient,” he said, to a few titters in the audience. “We just can’t expect this to happen overnight."

OLED remains compelling because of high performance and reduced manufacturing costs over time, Young said. The average consumer going into a Best Buy today “would be challenged to tell the difference” among LCD TVs, he said. “Here come OLEDs and they're going to have a differentiated product, and you should be able to see the difference, hopefully,” he said. Over time, OLED will cost less to produce than LCD “because it’s going to be more like a semiconductor” with “less than 50 percent component costs versus 75 percent component costs for LCD,” he said. “Over time, this is going to be a win situation,” he said.

In a pre-conference workshop on backplane requirements and driving schemes for AMOLED displays, moderator Reza Chaji, chief technology officer for Ignis Innovations, cited the high stakes that OLED represents for TV manufacturers. Referring to the “secretive” nature of display companies on plans for future technology, he said not one company showed OLED TV at the most recent SID conference, “although everybody is working on it,” because “it’s the holy grail of flat-panel display.” Because companies are “losing a lot on flat-panel LCD, they think this is going to be their savior so they're very careful,” he said.

In 2010, small-screen AMOLED display shipments totaled 45-46 million units, said Jennifer Colegrove, vice president of emerging display technologies at DisplaySearch, who updated the AMOLED market. Shipments in 2011 are forecast to double, Colegrove said, with most AMOLED shipments accounted for by displays smaller than 5 inches used in mobile phones, personal media players and digital still cameras. On the slightly larger side, volumes are much smaller. She cited Kodak’s 7.6-inch digital photo frame and a mini notebook prototype from OQO that never made it to market after the company filed bankruptcy.

The iPhone, which uses a 3.5-inch LCD, “set the bar higher” for cell phone displays, Colegrove said, and companies including Samsung and Google are using AMOLED to try to gain on the iPhone display, she said. The iPhone’s 960 x 720 display has 326 dot-per-inch pixel density compared with the Samsung Galaxy S and Google Nexus S AMOLED displays packing 800 x 400-pixel screens with 235 dpi resolution, she said. Next, AMOLEDs will move into the larger tablet space, with Samsung having recently announced it will use a 5.3-inch AMOLED display in the Galaxy Note, a hybrid mobile phone and tablet due in November, and the 7.7-inch Galaxy Tab, due in December. Both Super AMOLED displays have resolution of 1280 x 800, she said. In TVs, Sony and LG have stopped production on their statement OLED models, Colegrove said, “and now we're waiting for the next one to come to market."

Current advantages of AMOLED displays over LCD include thin design of down to .05mm, 180-degree viewing angle, high contrast and high color gamut and reproduction. Size is still limited, though, with the largest demo unit so far having topped out at 40 inches, she said. The life span of OLED displays is shorter than LCD, at up to 30,000 hours compared with 50,000 for LCD, and production costs are much higher, she said. Significant cost reductions are already evident, however, she said, citing Sony’s BVM-E series of AMOLED TVs released in May in Japan for the broadcast market and the PVM series with a $6,100 price tag for the 25-inch model, a 70 percent drop, she noted. To achieve cost reductions, manufacturers can improve the yield of the TFT backplane and material utilization rate, change the color patterning method to white with a color filter and improve TAC time, she said.