Pioneer

DisplaySearch released a new Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report in which they say that OLED revenue was $826 million in 2009 - a record year. AMOLED revenue was $537 million, and PMOLED revenue was $291 (lower than 2008, mostly because mobile phone design is moving away from clamshell phones).

Samsung Mobile Display is still the biggest OLED maker, with $566 million in revenues. Samsung is followed by RiTdisplay ($106 million), Pioneer ($60 million), TDK and Visionox ($15 million).

OLED-Info readers get a 5% discount on this report, follow this link

Earlier today we got word that Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical will jointly develop OLED Lighting. Now we have some more information. Pioneer will be the one to actually make the panels, and Mitsubishi will sell them across Verbatim's worldwide sales network. The plan is to start mass production in 2011, with a sales target of $335 million in 2015 and $1.1 billion in 2020. 

The two companies are currently researching OLED lighting panels that use printable hole injecting material (HIM) and new emitting materials, and  will also research printable OLED lighting development and commercialization. Mitsubishi plans to start early stage mass production and marketing of new printable emitting materials, which probably the PHOLED materials developed together with UDC.

We'll be able to view their first prototype (a dimmable/tone adjustable OLED panel, which Mitsubishi say it's the world's first) at the Light+Building exhibition, April 11-16 Frankfurt, Germany.

Via Twice

Pioneer announced that they have agreed to cooperate with Mitsubishi Chemical on OLED Lighting. Pioneer was the first company to actually make OLED panels, but have exited from the OLED display market in 2005 (and will stop making TVs alltogether in 2010). It's great to hear they are back into OLEDs.

Mitsubishi Chemical is already working with UDC towards Materials for use in Phosphorescent OLED Displays Fabricated Through Solution or "Wet" Processing Methods.

Pioneer says they will stop making TVs by 2010. Once a leader in Flat-panel TVs, Pioneer will cut around 10,000 jobs and will concentrade on Audio equipment. I guess we'll never see a Pioneer OLED TV then.

Pioneer was one of the first companies to have OLED displays (in their car audio decks), but it has stopped making them back in 2005.

DisplaySearch says that SamsungSDI's AMOLED second quarter shipments are down 22% from previous quarter (the forecase was an increase of 12%) due to low demand from phone makers, including Nokia. The slowdown is expected to continue in the next quarter.

Total AMOLED revenue was 54M$, down 27% quarter to quater.

PMOLED shipments are up 17% from previous quarter (20M$), after 3 quarters of slowing down. PMOLEDs are now 60% of the MP3 players market.

RiTdisplay had a record quarter with revenues of US$33.8 million. Pioneer maintained its shipment volume of 4.4 million units, most of which were monochrome displays. Chi Mei EL (CMEL) also reported AMOLED revenues of only US$7.6 million, down from US$12.8 million last quarter.

Read more here (digitimes)

Field Emission Technologies (of which Sony owns 37%) plans to mass-produce FED TVs in 2009. FED (Field Emission Displays) offers better picture quality than LCDs, and require half the energy (as they do not required backlighting). At first the TVs will be 26" in size, and later on they plan to produce 60" TVs.

Field Emission Technologies will invest something between 190$M and 280$M, buying a plant from Pioneer which is currently making Plasma TVs. Their sales forecast is 235M$ in the first two years.

Read more here (CrunchGear)

DisplaySearch reports that Samsung SDI drove the market, pushing shipments to 20.2M, which was up 30% Q/Q but down 9% Y/Y. For the year, total revenues grew 6% to US$493.9M (see Table 1) and total shipments grew 8% to 74.7M, according to the DisplaySearch Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report. The report findings also show that the shipment mix is changing, as AMOLEDs had a 9.7% share of total revenues in Q3’07, which jumped to 41% in Q4’07.

Key findings in the DisplaySearch report include

• Samsung SDI was #1 in total revenue with US$79.4M, more than double the #2 supplier RiTdisplay at US$30.3M.
• RiTdisplay retained its lead in shipments at 6.6M units with Samsung SDI following at 4.9M units.
  Pioneer was #3 in units and #3 in shipments.
• Sony shipped 2K 11” displays for use in the XEL-1 in December and is expected to ship 6K panels in Q1’08.
• Chi Mei EL increased its production of AMOLED panels, shipping 60K units in Q4’07 up from 16K in Q3’07.
• LG Display, formerly LG. Philips LCD, took over LGE’s PMOLED fab and is expected to ship ~150K AMOLED panels in Q1’08 for use in the recently announced LG-SH150A.

“AMOLEDs are beginning to hit their stride in the small/medium market with Nokia, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson all releasing products in Q4’07. We expect to see multiple product introductions in the next two quarters, and the panel size will jump to 2.6” and larger compared to previously announced 2.2-2.4” models,” said Barry Young, a senior DisplaySearch advisor.

Read more here (DisplaySearch)