Pioneer - Page 5

Check out this beautiful video showing Verbatim's Velve OLED lighting installations at the design library in Milan, Italy. Verbatim is showing some pretty neat design ideas, and of course the changing colors of the OLEDs are great:

The Velve OLED lighting panels are made together by Mitsubishi and Pioneer, and are the world's first color-tunable OLED lighting panels. The panels are 14x14cm in size and offer 28lm/W efficiency and 8,000 hours of lifetime. The typical CRI is 80.

Verbatim (a subsidiary of Mitsubishi) announced their new color-tunabe and dimmable OLED lighting panels called VELVE (these are made together by Mitsubishi and Pioneer). Verbatim says that the panels are already available - which makes the VELVE the world's first color-tunable OLED lighting panels. Verbatim apparantly offers just one size - 14x14cm, which is similar to Lumiotec's OLED panels.

Verbatim also announced that they will display the new panels at Fuori Salone, an exhibition held in Milan, Italy on April 12-17. Verbatim's stand was designed by Mr. Satoshi Uchihara, a lighting designer who was involved in lighting up such important sites as the famous Japanese temple Kinkakuji, and the New Terminal Building at Haneda Airport.

It turns out that Mitsubishi's Diamond Vision OLED displays (which go on sale today!) actually use PMOLED displays, and not AMOLEDs as we assumed. This is possible because each 'tile is only 128x128 in resolution. Using PMOLEDs allows Mitsubishi to make the displays cheaply (compared to AMOLEDs).

155-inch Diamond Vision OLED

The OLED material used in the displays is small molecule, deposited by vacuum evaporation. The material was developed by Mitsubishi and Pioneer together. (the two companies are also collaborating on OLED lighting).

Back in February, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical has announced an OLED Lighting JV. Pioneer will produce OLED lighting panels, Mitsubishi Chemical will supply chemicals and will market and sell the panels through their Verbatim daughter company.

We had the good chance to speak with Verbatim regarding this new OLED business.

Q: Are there any updates on the OLED JV?
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp will start to supply samples at the end of 2010, and mass production in the middle of 2011.

DisplaySearch released a new Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report in which they say that OLED revenue was $826 million in 2009 - a record year. AMOLED revenue was $537 million, and PMOLED revenue was $291 (lower than 2008, mostly because mobile phone design is moving away from clamshell phones).

Samsung Mobile Display is still the biggest OLED maker, with $566 million in revenues. Samsung is followed by RiTdisplay ($106 million), Pioneer ($60 million), TDK and Visionox ($15 million).

OLED-Info readers get a 5% discount on this report, follow this link

Earlier today we got word that Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical will jointly develop OLED Lighting. Now we have some more information. Pioneer will be the one to actually make the panels, and Mitsubishi will sell them across Verbatim's worldwide sales network. The plan is to start mass production in 2011, with a sales target of $335 million in 2015 and $1.1 billion in 2020.

The two companies are currently researching OLED lighting panels that use printable hole injecting material (HIM) and new emitting materials, and will also research printable OLED lighting development and commercialization. Mitsubishi plans to start early stage mass production and marketing of new printable emitting materials, which are probably the PHOLED materials developed together with UDC.

We'll be able to view their first prototype (a dimmable/tone adjustable OLED panel, which Mitsubishi say it's the world's first) at the Light+Building exhibition, April 11-16 Frankfurt, Germany.

Pioneer announced that they have agreed to cooperate with Mitsubishi Chemical on OLED Lighting. Pioneer was the first company to actually make OLED panels, but have exited from the OLED display market in 2005 (and will stop making TVs alltogether in 2010). It's great to hear they are back into OLEDs.

Mitsubishi Chemical is already working with UDC towards Materials for use in Phosphorescent OLED Displays Fabricated
Through Solution or "Wet" Processing Methods.

Pioneer says they will stop making TVs by 2010. Once a leader in Flat-panel TVs, Pioneer will cut around 10,000 jobs and will concentrade on Audio equipment. I guess we'll never see a Pioneer OLED TV then.

Pioneer was one of the first companies to have OLED displays (in their car audio decks), but it has stopped making them back in 2005.

DisplaySearch says that SamsungSDI's AMOLED second quarter shipments are down 22% from previous quarter (the forecase was an increase of 12%) due to low demand from phone makers, including Nokia. The slowdown is expected to continue in the next quarter.

Total AMOLED revenue was 54M$, down 27% quarter to quater.

PMOLED shipments are up 17% from previous quarter (20M$), after 3 quarters of slowing down. PMOLEDs are now 60% of the MP3 players market.

RiTdisplay had a record quarter with revenues of US$33.8 million. Pioneer maintained its shipment volume of 4.4 million units, most of which were monochrome displays. Chi Mei EL (CMEL) also reported AMOLED revenues of only US$7.6 million, down from US$12.8 million last quarter.

Read more here (digitimes)

Field Emission Technologies (of which Sony owns 37%) plans to mass-produce FED TVs in 2009. FED (Field Emission Displays) offers better picture quality than LCDs, and require half the energy (as they do not required backlighting). At first the TVs will be 26" in size, and later on they plan to produce 60" TVs.

Field Emission Technologies will invest something between 190$M and 280$M, buying a plant from Pioneer which is currently making Plasma TVs. Their sales forecast is 235M$ in the first two years.