Update: ETNews reports that LGD will not quit the lighting market completely, but change its focus to automotive OLED lighting
According to our information (from several sources within the industry), LG Display has decided to quit the OLED lighting market. LG found it difficult to ramp out production in its new OLED lighting fab and from what we understand the future prospects of the business did not seem good enough for the company.
This is very unfortunate news, as LG Display was seen by many as the leading company behind OLED lighting - and the one that could be the "champion" of the technology that will finally enable it to reach mass markets.
We recently visited Seoul and saw several beautiful OLED lighting installations that LGD deployed around the city. On a personal note I truly enjoy OLED lighting (including my Acuity Brands Chalina lamp that uses LGD panels) so this is quite sad news.
In December 2017 LGD announced that it started to mass produce OLEDs at its 5-Gen OLED fab in Gumi, Korea - with an initial capacity of 15,000 monthly substrates (30 times the capacity of LGD's previous 2-Gen line). LGD hoped that the new line will enable it to cut its production costs by around 95%, but apparently that was too optimistic.
LG Display lighting brand was called Luflex, and LG already pulled down its Luflex OLED lighting web site (lgoledlight.com). LGD was also supplying OLEDs for the automotive market (for example to the Mercedes 2018 S-class Coupe and Convertible) and we do now know yet wither LGD will continue to supply OLEDs to this market (it is likely it will continue to support its existing customers at the very least).
LG Display has now joined the ranks of many other companies that decided to quit the OLED lighting market - including OSRAM, Philips, GE, NEC, Panasonic and more. This move could make it difficult for the remaining players (OLEDWorks, First-o-lite and others) to sustain their own business, but we do hope that this will not be the end of this market and it could actually make it easier to the existing companies to success in current OLED lighting niches.
We could not get any official comment from LG Display.
Comments
This is very sad news.The LG OLED lighting I have is great.It's probably a good time to get a last of the current batch.LG OLED caretaker's...
I definitely want a few more before they go extinct!
That's really too bad! But with OLEDWorks there is still a big alternative for OLED projects on the market.
I would think that 2019 is still too early for OLED lighting to be cost competitive on the market...
Large flexible plastic OLED lighting panels could surely be usefull in many use cases but as of 2019, the price of such panels would probably make it largely too expensive for being relevant
It may require Gen-8 / Gen-10 (or more) to make the panel cost low enough to begin to make economical sense...