All Power to OLEDs

A lot of folks send me press releases, reports and stuff! I also surf the web in my quest for new information at all times.

One such report I came across was the "Energy Efficient Displays Technologies to 2020 – Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) Displays Set to Propel Growth of the Industry," by Research and Markets.

According to this report, the global OLED display market has been valued at $822 million in 2009 in comparison to a much smaller $256 million in 2005. Now, it is likely to grow at a CAGR of 25.5 percent during the period 2010-2020 and has been tipped to $10.6 billion by 2020!

As of now, mobile phones are the primary revenue drivers for OLED displays. Demand is likely to take off in large display applications. Some other application areas include digital cameras, MP3 players – I know this one very well, as a very close friend has an MP3 player with a nice OLED display – and other small-panel applications.

When I hear of OLEDs, I am compelled to go back by at least three years. Here's why!

Back in September 2007, the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and IT, Government of India, came up with the Special Incentive Package Scheme (SIPS) to encourage investments for setting up semicon fabs, and other micro- and nanotechnology manufacturing industries in India!

Within SIPS, the “ecosystem units” were defined as units, other than a fab unit, for the manufacture of semiconductors; displays including LCDs, OLEDs, PDPs, any other emerging displays; storage devices; solar cells; PV; other advanced micro- and nanotechnology products; and assembling and testing of all the above products.

In an article written back in 2007, I mentioned how, in Hong Kong, an ex-colleague and I covered OLEDs. One of the companies we used to write about in Hong Kong was Lite Array (OLED) HK. For those interested, Lite Array is offering a host of OLED modules and an MP3 Total+VA solution (OLED+CCM+MP3).

When I first read about this technology back in the early 2000, I used to wonder whether India could have such a capability. Post the SIPS' announcement, India had moved into a position to have OLEDs after all!

Today, I have not seen many developments in OLEDs in India, at least, not yet! There were some talks of Samtel trying to produce OLEDs in the past decade. However, am not sure whether that has happened. Would appreciate an update!

Pradeep