Competing technologies - Page 36

Sony's OLED program is now focused on medium (7" to 25") OLED panel used in professional monitors. With consumer OLED TV coming from Samsung and LG soon, Sony is also considering entering this market. We had the good chance of talking with Gary Mandle, the product manager of Sony's OLED products for the professional market. Gary has worked within the Sony Professional Solutions Group for more than 26 years in the development and marketing of new display products - including CRT, SXRD (LCOS), LCD, and now OLED products. His current focus is on Sony’s OLED technologies intended for video and film production & post production applications.

Q: Sony is currently offering 7.4", 16.5" and 24.5" professional OLED monitors (TriMaster EL^TM) and also OLED monitors for the medical market. Can you update on your current offerings?

A: For professional television and film production, Sony now has seven OLED models. These are offered in three series, each categorized according to performance and features sets to match different applications. Our PVM lineup includes the PVM 740 (7.4 inch), PVM 1741 (17 inch), and the PVM 2541 (25 inch). These are used in areas where you need something that is relatively cost effective and lets you see within the image. These are used in editing, dallies review, graphics generation, and special effects.

Sony announced managemental changes and a new CEO and president effective April 1. The new president, Kazuo Hirai, announced his future plans - which include a reinforcement of Sony's core business, rebuilding of its TV business, reformation of its business portfolio and acceleration of innovation.

Sony XEL-1

Regarding the TV market, Sony plans to minimize investment in non-competitive fields, but they will make major investments in OLED TV, Crystal LED and other technologies and products that use Sony's own technologies.

Lux Research posted an interesting grid that shows how different display developers rate on technical value and business execution. It includes mature technologies (such as OLED and e-paper) and emerging technologies such as electrochromic and electrofluidic displays.

Lux says that OLED materials and equipment developers have a clear head start over other technologies, with notable players such as UDC, CDT, Novaled and Kateeva. The company that stands out in both technical value and business execution is E Ink - with high score in technology and IP and strong partnerships and management team. E Ink is the only company that scores a "strong positive" - with their nearly 100% market share of the electrophoretic market - which is used in products such as Amazon's Kindle and B&N Nook e-readers.

Japan's Tazmo has developed a new flexible Inorganic LED panel that is quite efficient at 30 lm/W. Tazmo is using a coating process - which is easily adapter for I-LEDs as they have a simpler element structure when compared to OLEDs.

The new panel is A4 in size (210x297mm) and can easily be bent. I-LED is different from LEDs as they use the EL (electroluminescence) phenomenon. We do not know how close to commercialization this is.

Sony announced that they are developing a new display technology called Crystal-LED. Crystal-LED uses ultra-fine RGB LEDs to create a self-emitting display - basically this is similar to OLEDs, but with in-organic LEDs. Sony actually unveiled a prototype 55" Full-HD TV panel at CES 2012:

The TV uses over six-million LEDs and, compared to existing Sony LCD and Plasma displays features a higher contrast ratio (about 3.5 times higher), wider color gamut (about 1.4 times) and faster response time (10 times faster). It should also be more efficient, but this will depend on the image shown (just like in OLEDs).

Israel's Oree has developed a planar LED light source called the LightCell - which looks like an OLED. Now Cnlight (Guangdong Cnlight Optoelectronics Technology) has produced a table lamp that uses two such light sources.

Oree's LightCell e features 80 lm/W effifacy and 90-95 CRI, and it's rather thin at 3.73 mm. The LightCell has several individual LED dies and a flat light guide that creates a uniform planar emitting pattern.

Toshiba has developed a new 6.1" LTPS LCD panel that features 2560x1600 resolution - that's 498 ppi. The panel also features 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 16.7 million colors and 176-degrees viewing angles.

Toshiba wouldn't say whether they have plans to commercialize this display...

Hitachi unveiled a new 4.5" a-Si based IPS LCD display with 329ppi (720x1280). The company says that using amorphous silicon instead of an LTPS backplane means that the new display is cheaper then their previous IPS displays - with only a slight drop in performance (a lower contrast ratio).

Last month we heard that Hitachi, Sony and Toshiba signed an agreement to merge their small/medium display business. The new business venture will invest in OLED R&D and according to the companies, they consider OLED to be the core technology for next-gen small/medium displays. We do not know if Hitachi's new technology is relevant for OLEDs as well.

LG Display hired Intertek to test its AH-IPS LCD technology against Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus. LG's AH-IPS offers 720x1280 resolution at 4.5" (329ppi) - and Intertek says that it's better than Samsung's OLED - in quality and color accuracy. LG's LCD is also more power efficient (although it's not clear how they tested it - it just says that it's better because it always draws the same energy, while OLEDs consume twice as much on white screens).

Samsung Galaxy S2

Sony released three new walkman players - The high-end NWZ-A860 and the NWZ-S760BT, and NWZ-E460. None of these use OLED - they all use LCD displays. This is rather a disappointment - as most people assumed that Sony will stick to OLED in their high-end players.

The A series A860 replaces the A840/A845 which used a 2.8" OLED. The new A860 has a 2.8" touch LCD. Sony hasn't released a new model in the X series - since the original X1000 OLED was announced in 2009.