Everything OLED

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Point of No Return

[Source]

Commercial OLED products are well under way, and it shouldn't be too long before we see them trickle into the shops. All of the troubles that plagued the other contender to the TV crown - SED - don't seem like an issue for OLED.

But the outcome wasn't always looking this rosy for OLED. The known issues of blue lifetime, manufacturing difficulties, and the generally fast progress of LCD technology, put the dream of OLED on a knife edge for a while.

Thankfully LCD wasn't quite good enough, soon enough.

Five years ago, had LCD advanced to the level it's at now, we may have had to wait MUCH longer for OLED to take hold. At that time, LCD was far poorer - there was no Wide Color Gamut CFL (WCG-CCFL) backlight, never mind LCD backlighting. No 100 frames per second either, and response times, viewing angle and general piture quality was far from what it is today. Indeed, back then OLED looked like the answer to all our dreams.

But it's too late now. OLED has passed the point of no return. And even though the margin from LCD has narrowed in recent years, so much OLED investment has been made that it will surely come to dominate the market within 5-10 years.

Oh sure, OLED was always going to eventually come to market, but it may have taken 10 or even 20 years longer, since LCD would have been perceived as 'good enough' for the market.

• Posted by twinbee at 22:06:21 in
• 1 comment