Today Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization announced it wants to accelerate the commercialization of large-screen OLED-TVs with a $350 million investment to be spent over 5 years.

The public organization plans to cooperate with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and a total of 10 Japanese technology companies. These are:

- Hitachi Zosen
- Sony
- Sharp
- Shimadzu
- Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology
- Idemitsu Kosan
- Choshu Industry [JP]
- Sumitomo Chemical
- JSR
- Dainippon Screen

According to Japanese media, the initiative’s goal is to commercialize 40-inch OLED-TVs by 2018. This seems to be surprisingly late, as Samsung showcased a prototype of such a TV as early as 2005.

Sony plans to sell FED-TVs sized at 26 inches through an affiliate company starting next year. The company’s current OLED-TV, the XEL-1, comes with a screen size of 11 inches.