Pioneer - Page 6

DisplaySearch reports that Samsung SDI drove the market, pushing shipments to 20.2M, which was up 30% Q/Q but down 9% Y/Y. For the year, total revenues grew 6% to US$493.9M (see Table 1) and total shipments grew 8% to 74.7M, according to the DisplaySearch Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report. The report findings also show that the shipment mix is changing, as AMOLEDs had a 9.7% share of total revenues in Q3’07, which jumped to 41% in Q4’07.

Key findings in the DisplaySearch report include

• Samsung SDI was #1 in total revenue with US$79.4M, more than double the #2 supplier RiTdisplay at US$30.3M.


• RiTdisplay retained its lead in shipments at 6.6M units with Samsung SDI following at 4.9M units.
  
  Pioneer was #3 in units and #3 in shipments.


• Sony shipped 2K 11 displays for use in the XEL-1 in December and is expected to ship 6K panels in Q1’08.


• Chi Mei EL increased its production of AMOLED panels, shipping 60K units in Q4’07 up from 16K in Q3’07.


• LG Display, formerly LG. Philips LCD, took over LGE’s PMOLED fab and is expected to ship ~150K AMOLED panels in Q1’08 for use in the recently announced LG-SH150A.

AMOLEDs are beginning to hit their stride in the small/medium market with Nokia, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson all releasing products in Q4’07. We expect to see multiple product introductions in the next two quarters, and the panel size will jump to 2.6 and larger compared to previously announced 2.2-2.4 models, said Barry Young, a senior DisplaySearch advisor.

Read more here (DisplaySearch) 

Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp will buy about $357 million worth of new shares from Pioneer Corp and work with its loss-making rival in developing DVD players, car electronics and displays.

The two companies said they were also considering joint efforts in the development of OLED displays.

Pioneer Announces Business Results for 3Q Fiscal 2007. In the Others segment, sales rose 1.6% year on year to Y15,868 million (US$133.3 million), reflecting higher sales of OLED displays.

Pioneer Announces Business Results for 2Q Fiscal 2007. In the Others segment, sales rose 8.7% to JPY 17,208 million (US$145.8 million), mainly reflecting higher sales of factory automation systems and OLED displays in Japan.

Operating income in this segment was JPY 2,566 million (US$21.7 million) compared with an operating loss of JPY 780 million in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year. This mainly reflected improved profitability in OLED displays due to the benefits of business restructuring measures.

The company will reduce its research and development spending to 7 percent of sales from 8 percent by forming alliances with other manufacturers. Under the plan, Pioneer will also reduce the number of products it makes for other companies and withdraw from the business of making panels using AM-OLED technology.

Researchers from Kyoto University together with Mitsubishi Chemical, Pioneer, and Rohm have developed a new bendable OLED display panel.

We do not have a photo of this display, but they did present a monochrome (blue) business card-sized prototype. The researchers say that their technology can be adapted to full-color displays.

There are reports that Pioneer and TMDisplay are aggressively expanding their AMOLED capacity.

According to those reports, Pioneer plans to invest around $37 million to expand AMOLED capacity by 70% (to one million panels), while TMDisplay plans to start mass production of 3.5" P-LED panels in fiscal 2005 (April 2005-March 2006).

Pioneer says they will start producing 2.4" 240x320 262K colors OLED displays next year.

The screens are aimed toward mobile phones and will have an lifetime of over 10,000 hours.