No Sony OLED Displays In 2004

Anonymous Howard writes "Designtechnica is reporting that Sony will not introduce any OLED displays in 2004 as previously anticipated. Sony was planning on producing 300,000 2-inch OLED panels per month for its portable devices such as DSCs (digital still cameras) and PDAs. Surprisingly, there have only been a handful of products out that use OLED displays; Samsung has a cell phone and MSI has an MP3 player, for example."

Comments

Links links....where are the links!?

[ProfessionalCookie]

Such as MSI's MP3 Player and Samsung's Cell Phone.

Come on folks- this is the internet.

On a side note- I dare you to /. my .sig :)

OLED - technology definition

[syrinje]

For those of you who RTFA and are still left mumbling "what the heck is an OLED.." here it is OLED is an Electroluminescent display technology. It is cnsidered one of the most promising emerging display technologies and exploits ultrathin films of organic compounds, either small molecules or polymers, which emit light (luminescence) when subjected to a voltage. These organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) produce bright, lightweight displays. A number of small independent firms in Europe and the US have been developing devices based on various luminescent molecules.

On a related note, in its 2004 MiniDV camcorders of the HC-XX series Sony claims to use a "Hybrid LCD display" which is claimed to perform significantly better than the regular LCD screens it renders obsolete (like the one in my 2003 MiniDV). I tried to find out what Hybrid meant and failed - what is the big secret I wonder...

Re:OLED - technology definition

[janbjurstrom]

I would also recommend an interesting (and lenghty) article on the subject in Scientific American I read a few months back:

Better Displays with Organic Films

It covers quite a few topics related to the technolog[y|ies], like the problems with the - currently - shorter life-span relative to LCD, etc.

Re:Cost of OLEDs

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the lessened life compared to LCDs, but you're wrong about the production cost. OLEDs are cheaper to produce than LCDs, this is a known fact.

There is also many other advantages compared to LCDs; Organic light emitting diodes are self-emitting and don't require a backlight, they're brighter and require less power than LCD displays. They can also be read from a much wider viewing angle than LCDs, and they can even be made on plastic instead of glass.

I sure enjoy the OLED display on my mobile phone :)

- A lazy AC

As long as it isn't passed over...

[geschild]

... Because of vested interests.

OLED holds many promises because it is, as the name indicates, a LED type of display. In other words, you don't block/filter an underlying lightsource like with LCD-type screens. Every pixel itself emits light. This makes for better image quality at higher resolution and less power consumption plus, as a bonus, no vulnerable, ill-distrubuted central light-source.

Once (if?) the optimal solution is found to creating the seperate Organic colors reliably (and currently the biggest problem: durably) OLED should overtake all other techniques. Especially since some production techniques currently being pioneered do not have an inherent limitation to the substrate size (read: Mega sized displayes at Giga resolutions, ultraflat, high light-output and low power...).

I say should because LCD is currently the entrenched technique and I don't think all investments have been recoverd yet. The question then becomes: is the best (cheapest to produce) OLED solution being brought forward by a current player with LCD 'capital' to defend or an outsider? If the latter, OLED has a fighting chance, if the former, we'll have to see if several producers have competing designs to make OLED still take off. A lot of money has gone into those factories, and even if they are relatively easily converted to OLED, most companies don't jump for joy at the prospect of destroying existing investments for a newer technology. (Or any new investments for that matter ;D)

Recouping costs may hold OLED back more than any technological hurdle, I'm sorry to say.

Re:Cost of OLEDs

[mobby_6kl]

OLED displays can also support much higher (than LCD) refresh rates. Because there is no backlight, when a pixel is black it it really black so the contrast is also much higher.
30 years if of course too much, LCDs dont last that long and about 5 years should be good enough. Keep in mind that they do not die the day they turn 5 y.o., they just lose some of the brightness/contrast.

Re:Kodak uses OLED

[ffsnjb]

So maybe I'll get some mod points for this (makes up for maybe losing my job on Monday. :)

DX7630 specs

DX6490 specs

Note the descriptions on the specs page, no where does it mention OLED, but LCD is everywhere.

Re:Cost of OLEDs

[pslam]

There is also many other advantages compared to LCDs; Organic light emitting diodes are self-emitting and don't require a backlight, they're brighter and require less power than LCD displays.

The OLED panels I've played with have all been far lower power than an LCD with the backlight turned on, but that's not a fair comparison for some products. For example, MP3 players can get away with turning the backlight off in many cases. An LCD with the backlight turned off takes almost no power. This "idle" state was hard to do with the OLEDs I've used because they were PWM driven, and below a certain brightness they'd get flickery. At the lowest acceptable brightness, they were using about 100 times the power an idle LCD did.

But OLED is still lower power for devices which are useless with the backlight turned off (like cameras, portable TV/DVD players etc). I wouldn't be surprised if next generation panels come down enough in power requirement that the difference isn't important.