Panasonic - Page 6

Last month Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic announced the formation of a new OLED company. JOLED, funded by the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, will be established formally in January 2015, and will focus mainly on medium sized OLEDs for tablet applications.

JDI 5.2-inch FHD OLED prototype

One of the key questions surrounding JOLED is the technology choice. While Sony (and JDI, which is basing its OLED program on Sony's tech) is using small-molecule OLEDs and an evaporation process, Panasonic based its OLED development on Sumitomo's PLED materials and printing technologies.

In May 2014 it was reported that Japan Display may setup an OLED joint venture together with Sony and Panasonic. Today Kyodo news confirms this report, and says that the three companies will indeed form a new company (which will be called JOLED) that will develop small and medium OLED displays - mostly for tablet devices. The official announcement is expected soon.

JDI 5.2-inch FHD OLED prototype

JOLED will receive and investment from the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, a public-private investment fund. Similarly to JDI itself, the INCJ will hold 70% in the new company. JDI will hold 20% and Sony and Panasonic will each own 5%.

Yesterday I posted that Panasonic reportedly decided to withdraw from the OLED TV business and sell their OLED unit to Japan Display. Today there's a new report from Japan that JDI is now considering to setup an OLED joint venture with both Sony and Panasonic (update: this is now official, the new company will be called JOLED).

The new company would be mostly owned by the Innovation Network of Japan (INCJ) - the same government-backed fund that formed Japan Display back in September 2011. INCJ invested around $2.5 billion in JDI and holds 70% of the shares. JDI was formed by joining the mobile display units of Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi.

A report from Japan suggests that Panasonic decided to withdraw from the OLED TV business as production costs are too high for the Japanese company. According to the report, Panasonic hopes to sale its OLED business to Japan Display (an agreement is expected next month).

This report is not confirmed yet. It is rather surprising as Panasonic's OLED business is focused on TV panels, while Japan Display is producing small/medium displays. In the past few years, Panasonic focused on printing technologies using Sumitomo's PLED materials.

Update: According to a UK magazine, Sony denies pulling out of the OLED TV market

In December 2013 Sony and Panasonic announced that they canceled their OLED TV joint-development effort. The two Japanese companies said they will continue to develop OLED technologies independently. Now the Japanese Nikkei Asian Review reports that Sony decided to halt their OLED TV development to focus on UHD LCDs.

Sony 56-inch OLED TV Prototype

According to the report, Sony does not see any real demand for OLED TVs any time soon. While they may be right in the very near term (1-2 years), this is a very risky decision because if OLED TVs do take off in 2015 or so as Sony will again be too late to the new TV technology (the same mistake they did with LCDs).According to some reports, Sony aims to enter the OLED TV market using LGD panels, a strategy that didn't quite work out for Sony with LCD panels a few years ago.

Korean news site ETNews reports that Japanese makers (Sony and Panasonic, specifically) are negotiating OLED TV panel supply deals with LG Display. Both companies aim to develop picture quality improvement algorithms in house and aim to release the TVs by the end of 2014.

Sony and Panasonic halted their OLED TV joint development project in December 2013. While it was reported that both companies are still developing OLED TV technologies, it seems that if they want to enter the OLED TV market, they will have to buy the panels, and currently LG Display is the only maker with the capacity to actually supply such panels.

Panasonic is reportedly going to withdraw from the OLED lighting market. The Japanese company cannot see earnings coming from this operation due to the high cost of production. Panasonic Idemitsu OLED lighting (PIOL, established in 2011 with Idemitsu Kosan) will be dissolved. Panasonic will turn all of its focus into LED lighting.

This is sad news and a bit of surprise as only a few weeks ago Panasonic demonstrated three new OLED lighting panels at a LED trade show in Tokyo, including the company's first flexible OLEDs. On the other hand, In December 2013 Panasonic also canceled their OLED TV joint development with Sony. So perhaps it makes sense for Panasonic to withdraw from OLEDs altogether.

Panasonic demonstrated three new OLED lighting panels at a LED trade show in Tokyo. First up is a flexible panel - this is the first time Panasonic demonstrated a flexible OLED. They did not reveal any specification - beside the fact that it is only 0.4 mm thick.

The second panel is a 10x10 cm panel that offers a luminous efficiency of 100 lm/W. Panasonic already unveiled a 114 lm/W panel back in 2013 - but it was a lot smaller (1x1 cm). According to Tech-On, the panel is not very bright and is also rather yellowish in color and they suspect that the CRI is low. Panasonic says that the emphasis has been on efficiency for this panel, and they wouldn't reveal specifications such as lifetime, CRI, color temperature, etc.

There's an interesting article over at JapanTimes, covering the Lighting Japan 2014 event that took place last month. They also posted a nice video from the conference, showing several OLED installations from NEC Lighting, Philips, PIOL and others. There are also some flexbile (formable) OLEDs on display, I'm not sure if these are from LG Chem or Konica Minolta (the only two companies that actually produces flexible OLED lighting prototypes).

NEC Lighting is developing OLED lighting for a long time (over 10 years), and during the video you can see demonstrations of the company's OLED panels, including transparent ones (these were unveiled in 2013).

Panasonic recently cancelled their OLED TV joint-development project with Sony, so Panasonic's OLED plans aren't clear. The company showed six 55" curved OLED TV prototypes at CES, and according to an article in the USA Today, Panasonic does have some ambitious OLED projects.

So first of all Panasonic officials claimed that consumers should expect new panasonic OLED displays in stores in 2014. This is very interesting and hopefully Panasonic will give more details soon. Panasonic also plans to provide professional OLED displays for production, signage and security systems.