But these Orbeos OLED lights are as bright and efficient as any LED or CFL, but are both warm, diffuse, and dimmable. I might choose them over regular bulbs just because they have the best of all worlds.

They’re extremely flat, so they can go just about anywhere, but that same flatness means they won’t work to illuminate a whole area unless you have a few. Some OLEDs, however, are flexible, and once they can stretch the matrix into a light bulb-esque shape, you might be able to put them into your regular sockets.

[via OLED-Display.net]

OLED can still pretty much be considered a thing of the future, but we’re getting closer to use the technology in our homes every month. Today, Casio Computer announced [JP] it has teamed up with Tokyo-based technology company Toppan Printing to develop and produce OLED panels. The new joint venture will start operations from April 2010, with both companies involved saying they’ll focus on manufacturing OLED panels sized ten inches and smaller first (like the one you see in the picture).

Those OLED screens are supposed to be used in digital cameras and cell phones by 2015. But Casio and Toppan also said they will conduct R&D to eventually develop bigger sized OLEDs, for example for TVs, too. The OLEDs will be manufactured using high-polymer-type organic electroluminescent compounds, whereas OLED production today is mainly based on low-polymer organic compounds. According to the companies, their method is more efficient and simpler.

Casio will first transfer 600 employees to a new firm, which will be established in February and will focus exclusively on OLED development. Toppan says it will then buy 80% of all outstanding shares of the joint venture (total capitalization: $4.5 million).

You would be hard pressed to find an OLED TV in any brick and mortar retailer besides the Sony Store right now. The technology is amazing, but they just aren’t available yet and that might not change soon according to a iSuppli report. The TVs are too small and the prices are too high to gain any real traction. But, as we all know, that will change as the display tech evolves. However, don’t expect to see a wall full of OLED because the LCD market isn’t slowing down.

Digitimes,

However, even with this growth, unit shipments of OLED TV panels will amount to just 850,000 units in 2013 and only 4.7 million units in 2015, up from 25,000 in 2009. This represents a tiny number of shipments compared to the LCD TV panel market, which is set to reach 232.6 million units in 2013.

What we will likely see is similar to the CRT projection TV market growth compared to plasma TVs from earlier in this decade. Stores will carry a few OLED TVs to draw people in like they did with plasma TVs. But once the average Joe sees the price and size compared to an LCD, they will likely opt for the cheaper option and larger option.

As long as OLED continues to mature and carve out a market, it might eventually become the dominate display option. Unless, of course, something new and sexier doesn’t come to market first. Or 3D display take off. *shudder*

What might such a flexible OLED be used for? How about a single-surface multi-touch computer? No separate keyboard and screen, no hinge, and all sex appeal.

Hyundai? Pretty please bring OLED screens to the automotive world. It doesn’t have to be as futuristic as the dashboard in the Blue-Will concept car, but OLEDs are just so nice. Ford is already using LCD screens in its latest hybrids, but why not up the game a bit, and do something radical? Please?

[CarAdvice via OLED-Info]

OLED TVs were in major attendance at this year’s CES. Afterall, Sony declared that 2009 was going to be their year. But apparently the marketing flacks and bean counters are on difference softball teams because the thin TVs have been delayed because of Sony’s huge profit loses.

To summarize the subscription-only WSJ article the TVs have been delayed because of both the manufacturing cost and that Sony will lose money on the thin screen TVs. The original Sony OLED still sells for $2500 and it’s only a 11-inch screen. The examples at CES this year were a lot larger, but there wasn’t a MSRP anywhere to be seen. What Sony needs right now is mass-market, profitable TVs and that’s not OLED’s game.

But hopefully OLED TVs don’t go down the same vaporware path like SEDs. Samsung hasn’t announced any cuts in its OLED aspirations. Hopefully one day there will be a whole shelf of OLEDs at Best Buy and Walmart.

This one in particular has its AMOLEDs on a glass substrate, with steel behind and a resin coating in front. I imagine that as long as the resin stays intact, the glass is unlikely to flex or break, so this display really can take a beating. Here’s hoping these super-thin, super-contrasty, super-durable displays make it onto our desktops soon.

[via OLED-display.net]

I swear, once the prices come down on OLED displays, these low-power, highly versatile displays are going to be everywhere. It might actually get kind of annoying.

The futuristic OLED bracelet has a 4-inch display with a 100ppi resolution/QVGA (320 x RGB x 240 pixels), shows 1.67 million colors and features a luminance of 100cd/m². Weighing 8g, the panel is just 0.3mm thick (as thin as an OLED screen Sony showed last year). This is certainly a cool prototype (just like Samsung’s much larger and thinner “flapping display”), but it’s just a prototype and it seems we have to wait a few more years before we can lay our hands on large-sized OLEDs.

Via Tech-On

Yay for Seiko Epson! The corporation just announced a breakthrough in the layering of organic material that should allow for larger OLED screens eventually. The current method, called Vacuum Thermal Evaporation (VTE), has problems producing uniform layers for large screens. This new method however overcomes the problems by using inkjet techniques, which should allow for larger screens.

Epson has recently developed the long-awaited solution in the form of an OLED display fabrication process that leverages the company’s proprietary Micro Piezo inkjet technology to achieve markedly greater accuracy in organic material deposition than the conventional technology. The process has been used in trial production to fabricate a highly uniform prototype panel. Extremely uniform layers (volume error < 1%) are achieved by precisely controlling the selection and ejection of multi-size droplets of ink material on a substrate so that only the required volume of material is deposited. Epson’s technology dramatically improves both quality and throughput and brings the advent of large-screen OLED TV a significant step closer to realization.

OLED screens are impressive but so far have been limited in size. Hopefully this new technique will change that.

OLED TVs sure offer phenomenal picture quality, but even now, 2 years after Sony launched its XEL-1, we still wait for large-screen versions. Samsung showcased a 40-inch OLED display last year (pictured). Now Panasonic might be onto something bigger. The company is planning to develop the world’s first OEL panel that’s sized at “40 inches or larger” by fiscal 2010.

Panasonic will team up with major chemical company Sumitomo Chemical to produce the OLED displays in a new LCD TV plant Panasonic will open in summer next year. The companies said by 2015, their 40-inch OLED TVs should boast a power consumption of 40W, a third of current LCD TVs and just 10% of what existing plasma TVs of that size use.

The TVs are also expected to be just 3mm thick and 20 times brighter than plasma displays that are on the market today. We can’t wait (for affordable OEL panels).

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

A layer of carbon nanotubes, some flouro-rubber, and some electricity are all you need to make a wacky little OLED that can conform to almost any surface. Tokyo researchers have created 100 square centimeters of this material to create at total of 256 monochrome pixels but better versions are on the way.

“In the future, displays that once had to be flat can be made spherical, or even moving,” says Takao Someya, professor of electronic engineering at the University of Tokyo. “A human-shaped display could be used to show medical diagnosis data, and there are various other applications.”

I’ll say.

Sony gave up on FED displays a few weeks ago, practically burying the technology that was supposed to become a competitor for the OLED standard. But there is also SED, surface-conduction electron-emitter displays, which has been around for a while and mostly flew under the radar since. But now Canon seems to step up research efforts to further develop SED technology.

The company filed two new SED-related patents (”Electron-emitting device, electron source, image display apparatus and manufacturing method of electron-emitting device”) in the US, No. 20090111350 and No. 20090108727. While the former depicts a solution on how electric fields in SEDs can be reduced in size, the latter deals with a way to improve picture quality. The patents were filed April 30.

Canon has been showcasing SED prototypes for a few years now (see the picture for an example from 2008) without ever getting serious about commercializing the technology. Toshiba used to team up with with Canon to develop SED technology but left the joint venture in 2007.

Sony took part at the 5th International FPD Expo that ended today in Tokyo, showcasing for the first time in their home market of Japan a 21-inch OLED that almost doubles the size of the XEL-1 (11 inches). Unlike the XEL-1, however, the 21-incher is still in prototype stage.

The new OLED boasts a resolution of 1,366×768 pixels and an incredible contrast ratio of 1 million to 1. Sony says the display isn’t even 1cm thick and did away with the navigation system style of the XEL-1 by integrating the stand and the bezel. While the screen itself produces gorgeous images, the whole apparatus still isn’t quite as sexy.

Take a look at the OLED prototype in the video below.

Sony Japan today announced the NW-X1000 series [JP], consisting of two Walkman, the NW-X1050 with 16GB internal memory and the 32GB NW-X1060. The so-called X-Series was introduced to the general public for the first time back in January (during the CES 2009).

Both models will be available in Japan from April 25 (in black and red). Sony hasn’t said yet when American and Europeans will be able to lay their hands on the devices. In Japan, the 16GB model will cost $400, while the 32GB version will be priced at $500.

The Walkman comes with a cool 3-inch OLED touchscreen (240×432 resolution), WiFi (IEEE 802.11b/g), YouTube support, noise cancellation function and a One-Seg digital TV tuner (that only makes sense in Japan and Brazil). You can play your audio files as MP3/HE-AAC/AAC/WMA/linear PCM/ATRAC/ATRAC Advanced Lossless and video in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and MPEG-4/WMV formats.

Sized at 97.4×52.5×10.5mm, it’s considerably smaller than an iPod Touch (see the picture above).

Watch it in action in the video below.

Via Impress [JP]

CNET

Canon a few years ago demonstrated a 5D with an OLED (organic light-emitting display) screen. I just saw some cheap OLED keychain displays that cost $60 or so. What’s the timeframe for building OLEDs instead of LCDs in the cameras? It’s a much higher-quality image and I there might be battery advantages as well.

Westfall

It is a higher-quality image, no question about it, and the power consumption is lower because of the design. It’s a very efficient design. Canon has been developing that technology for quite some time. We showed our prototype in 2005, and here we are four years later. I think the bulk of what’s been going on in that interim is perfecting that technology–not just in terms of performance but also in terms of manufacturing process. I can’t give you a timeline today, but we’re a whole lot closer now.

One of the things I could tell you about is that in 2008, we purchased a manufacturing facility for OLEDs, so in Japan, we’re creating the infrastructure to be able to bring this online. The issue for us is not just the perfection of the technology and lowering of the manufacturing costs, it’s also being able to generate the quantity of these devices to satisfy our needs across an entire range of consumer products. If you look at our global production, we have in somewhere in the vicinity of 25 million or so compact cameras every year, and it’s growing. Digital SLRs last year we did 4.4 million. And that’s just cameras. Then you could start talking about the Pixma inkjet printers–a great many of them have LCD displays.

The sooner the better, boys. Lets get these OLED cameras rolling.

Toshiba announced yesterday it plans to convert Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology (TMD) into a wholly owned subsidiary. TMD is an LCD manufacturing joint venture formed by Toshiba and Matsushita (now Panasonic). The joint venture produces around 10% of small LCD panels. It’s second only to Sharp in this market segment.

Toshiba said it will buy Panasonic’s 40% stake in TMD on April 28 for a $20 million, increasing its own interest to 100%. The company also announced plans to completely restructure TMD, lower production costs and think about mass-manufacturing of OLED TVs. And it seems something needs to be done, indeed. For fiscal 2008, which ended March 31, TMD is rumored to have suffered $30 million operating loss.

TMD was established in 2002. The new company will be called Toshiba Mobile Display Company.

MIT graduate student David Merrill was inspired by building blocks to design computerized blocks called Siftables. They are interactive computers each the size of a cookie and can sense each other and their motion. “Each Siftable has a color OLED screen, four infrared communication modules – one in each direction in the horizontal plane – a 3-axis accelerometer, and a Bluetooth radio,” Merrill explained. The Siftables have many applications including language, math, and logic games for kids. The video demoes the Siftable Music Sequencer where each Siftable represents an instrument or music feature.

Of course, the uses all depend on various aspects of the displays: how fast is it to dim or light up? How small can you make it? How large? In what shape? And so on. Still, it’s a great technology and hopefully we’ll be seeing it in action soon.

[via OLED-Display.net image credit: Philips]