http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/s...leID=205900487
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| SAN JOSE, Calif. — High profile demonstrations of the latest large-screen organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month have sparked talk about the possibility of an OLED notebook computer. Notebook makers and analysts said such a product could plow new ground in size, weight and power, but will be no more than a very high-end niche for the foreseeable future. Samsung and Sony showed large screen OLED displays at CES, including a Sony XEL-1 11-inch OLED TV said to cost more than $1,700. Multiple companies are promising more of the displays are on the way, but to date the industry has seen no successful commercial products using such screens. Manufacturing issues, high costs and low volumes are the primary issues that dog large-screen OLEDs. Even the emerging class of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) with displays of about seven inches could be a stretch for the OLED technology which today is mainly focused on cellphone and media player displays measuring less than three inches diagonally. "The cost of these things today is a king's ransom and will probably remain so as long as volumes are limited," said Steve Sechrist, a senior analyst at market watcher Insight Media (Norwalk, Conn.). We did scour the show floor at CES for just such an OLED UMPC display, but found none," he added. "The reason for the high cost is the lack of scalability of current OLED material deposition and active-backplane fabrication processes to Gen 5 sizes and above," said Ken Werner, another analyst from Insight Media. "There are also issues with backplane yields and OLED material utilization," he added. At CES "Samsung showed a dazzling 1920 x 1080 14-inch OLED display, and showed one of them in a [prototype] notebook PC," said Werner. "Bottom line, I'd say that we won't see a commercially available OLED notebook PC until late 2009 at the very earliest, and it will be a premium product," he added. Such products have their place. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs rolled out the $1,700 MacBook Air using a conventional LCD display this week. The notebook is just 0.16-0.76 inch thick and weighs three pounds. OLEDs promise to fuel the trend to thin and light notebooks. "The chief advantages that an OLED could bring to the notebook market would be a very thin panel, weight reduction, and possibly a power savings over backlit LCDs, but the cost of the OLED is very likely going to more than offset any of that for quite some time to come," said Bob Myers, a display technologist for Hewlett-Packard Co. "I would expect that we will see notebook-sized OLEDs--at least the smaller sizes, say 10.4-13.3-inches--introduced by 2010 at least," said Myers. "I've already seen such things on some roadmaps, but they'll be at least a 2X cost hit over a comparable LCD, and I think that will restrict them to some very niche-market products," he added. Myers echoed analysts who said until panel makers invest in next-generation fabs for large-sized OLEDs, the products are likely to be little more than a "fashion statement." Bruce Montag, a system architect at Dell Computer agreed. "At this point the price premium, limited product availability, and reduced life span of OLEDs relative to LCD technology are gating factors for application to high volume notebooks. The potential customer benefits are exciting though, and we're eager to offer this technology when it's ready," Montag said. At a CES press conference, executives from Sharp Electronics, which produced 74 million LCD panels in 2007, said they do not see large screen OLEDs getting into mainstream products for the foreseeable future. "At this year's CES you will see and hear a lot about OLED," said Michael Troetti, president of Sharp Electronics Marketing Company of America. "Sharp is exploring this technology, but it will not replace LCDs anytime soon for two reasons," he added. Large OLEDs still suffer from an average four-year lifespan and are difficult to produce at large sizes, he explained. By contrast, "LCD technology has completed only a little more than half of its possible evolution," said Toshihiko Fujimoto, chief executive of Sharp. At its CES event, Fujimoto described Sharp's tenth-generation LCD facility, a whopping 314 acre site now under construction outside Osaka. Between Sharp and its suppliers, companies are investing a total of $9.1 billion in the site which will start producing in a couple years 112x120-inch substrates capable of yielding 15 40-inch panels each, he said. |
