JOLED (Japan OLED) was established in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic with an aim to become an OLED medium display producer. Following years of R&D and initial production, the company initiated mass production of its OLEDIO panels in 2021 at its new 5.5-Gen production line in Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.
JOLED's panels appeared on the market, but only for high-end applications such as LG's professional monitor range. According to a new report from Korea, the company did not manage to find a new investor and is now on the verge of bankruptcy.
The report suggests that even though production of its panels began last year, the yields are very low, which means that panel costs are still very high and the company does not manage to increase its yields.
It is also reported that the company had a four-year project with Lexus to develop 10-inch automotive OLED displays, but that project ended in 2021 in failure.
In 2020, TCL (CSoT) invested 20 billion Yen (around $187 million USD) in JOLED, and has also signed an agreement to jointly develop OLED TV printing technologies. TCL is getting ready to develop large-area inkjet printed panels by 2024 based on JOLED's technology.
In 2019, JOLED raised $228 million to build a module production line. In 2018 the company raised $400 million from four investors, including Denso, Toyota and Sumitomo.
If JOLED indeed dissolves, this will be a very sad end to the first commercial inkjet printed OLED venture.
Comments
I wonder if TCL has first refusal on JOLED's IP and know-how given their recent investment.
I have the 27" and 32" J-OLED panels in the LG 27EP950 and 32EP950. The 27" had >>terrible color consistency across the screen with mild brightness issues. The 32" is better but 3" of the leaft and right sides of the monitor are up to 1000K cooler than the center which can't be calibrated out with my hardware. They'd have to do a pixel-by-pixel calibration to fix these issues.
Industry is struggeling for 20(!) years with printing OLED displays: In 2002, Philips launched the first high volume production printed OLED product, a Philishave electric razor. The 22 x 24 mm passive matrix display (single color) shows battery charging level.