DisplaySearch has updated its 2006 OLED Technology Report, a comprehensive examination of the fledgling OLED industry, which reached revenues of $491M in 2005, up 8% Y/Y, and unit shipments of 55.8M, up 72%. Updates are due to a number of recent changes affecting the OLED industry: Liquidation of SK Display, TMDisplay and Seiko Epson de-emphasizing commercialization of AMOLEDs, Pioneer closing its ELDis JV and the concurrent end of its AMOLED activity, Sharp reduction in small/medium panel ASPs due to over capacity in TFT LCDs, Continuing difficulty in using LTPS backplanes for AMOLEDs.
The OLED display makers are in transition from passive matrix to active matrix centricity, not unlike LCDs in the early to mid 1990s. The difference is that AMOLED display makers expect to ride the benefits of the existing TFT infrastructure created for LCDs. The report shows the status of material development, manufacturing (both evaporation and ink-jet printing) and the proposed solutions to high yielding a-Si and p-Si backplanes.
