Sunday, October 11, 2009

OLED TV revenue to reach $1.8B in 2015

iSuppli -
OLED TV revenue to reach $1.8B in 2015
Despite the surge, OLEDs will remain a niche product due to their small sizes and prohibitively high prices.
Shipments of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) panels for televisions will account for only a tiny portion of the global TV market during the next six years, despite a nearly 200 times increase in Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) panel revenue during the same period, according to iSuppli.

Although the bright, clear pictures are a draw for consumers, the analyst firm said, the small sizes and prohibitively high prices of the sets are not.

Global revenue from shipments of OLED panels for use in televisions will surge to $1.8 billion in 2015, up from $10 million in 2009. This will make television the biggest revenue-generating application for OLED panels in 2015, surpassing the much higher-volume market of main displays for mobile phones. The large sizes of televisions relative to the small displays on mobile phones means the pricing for their OLED displays is dramatically higher, boosting revenue.

Among the features that make OLED attractive is the advantages offered by AMOLED technology as compared with LCDs. Aside from image quality, AMOLEDs have a slim form factor and consume much less power than LCDs, which makes them attractive to environmentally conscious consumers.

However, barriers to OLED adoption remain, including limited manufacturing, technological and quality challenges. For instance, there currently is no investment in fabs capable of producing larger AMOLED panels that can compete directly with the most popular LCD-TV sizes, according to iSuppli. Because of this, it is unknown whether high-volume manufacturing of large-sized AMOLED panels can generate yields that are competitive with other display technologies. The displays also suffer from “image sticking,” a phenomenon that leaves an artefact on a screen after a static image is displayed too long.

Finally, the increasing competitiveness of LCDs is a factor, as they are improving their refresh rates, moving from 120 Hz to 180 Hz and 240 Hz. They also are using LED backlights to improve colour performance; getting thinner, which undermines an OLED advantage; and TFT-LCD prices are dropping.

1 comment:

Lat said...

Nice post. Great hanging with the TS team tonight.

You gals are so funny!