14 DAY TRIAL // Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screens are becoming more and more popular with worldwide consumers, and the increased adoption rate made them extremely affordable. However, the new OLED technology is here, and Sony plans to develop and promote it to make it as successful as LCD displays.
The conglomerate is mostly concerned with the future of th ethereal TV sets, and company officials announced that it will invest $200 million in researching and developing large size OLED display panels. Sony was also the first TV manufacturer to release an OLED TV on the market in late 2007.
LCD substrate manufacturers spend billions of dollars on researching and improving the LCD technology, and Samsung was no exception. The company invested more than $2 billion into their 7th generation of LCD displays production plant, that is able to produce about 50,000 panels per month. The OLED production process is less expensive than LCD, but the whole catch resides in the intellectual property and design patents. At the moment, there are only a few companies that have everything it takes to build OLED monitors and television sets.
The thinnest TV on the market was Sony's XEL-1, an 11-inch display with an ultra-thin profile that would make even the MacBook Air burst into tears. The 3-millimeter thick TV was built using OLED panels, but that's not everything the new technology promises: the OLED-based TVs will feature brighter colors and less power consumption, given the fact that backlights are not needed anymore.
The OLED technology is still expensive, and the Sony XEL-1 would retail for as much as $1,700, which is an unacceptable price tag for an 11-inch TV. Moreover, Sony could only produce about 2,000 of the TVs each month, given the fact that the manufacturing process is not only difficult, but also expensive.