BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Seven Reasons Why OLED TVs Could Really Be Real This Time

This article is more than 10 years old.

The Consumer Electronics Show is taking place in Las Vegas this week and, as usual, vendors are showing off televisions made from Organic Light Emitting Diodes. It's as predictable as a celebrity appearance by a Star Trek veteran.

LG and Samsung both showed off 55-inch OLED TVs due later in 2012. The screens are only a few millimeters thick and provide astounding color contrast and clarity. Granted, the TVs might cost $8,000 when they hit Best Buy, but both South Korean vendors, who truly set the agenda for the TV industry, say these are real products that will come out.

"The most exciting TVs at the show from both a design and picture quality standpoint are the two 55-inch OLED TVs announced by LG and Samsung,” David Katzmaier, who oversees TV coverage for CNET, tells me. “Their prices will be astronomical by LCD and plasma standards, but their images are clearly better and they can be as thin as five millimeters. They seem like disembodied images in person."

But, yes, OLED TVs have taken their time. I saw my first OLED TV back in 2007 in Japan. Since then, a grand total of two OLED TVs have hit the market: an 11-inch one from Sony that cost more than $2,000 and a 15-incher from LG that cost around $2,700. So that’s a few thousand dollars for TVs with screens smaller than most notebook displays. The same goes for LED lights: the trade show demos far outnumber the actual  products.

But don’t give up hope. Here are seven real reasons why OLED TVs will be a big deal in a few years.

1. The Manufacturing Technology Steadily Improves. OLEDs are essentially transparent sheets of plastic that give off light when zapped with little bit of electricity. This partly explains why they are energy efficient and thin. The problem has been making large OLEDs. Samsung and many others have inserted OLED screens into cell phones, but not in notebook, tablets or TVs much because the manufacturing yields on the large panels has been terrible.

It is also difficult to keep moisture out of OLED panels, raising the specter of customer backlash.

The 55-inch TVs underscore the steady progress on the tool sets required to produce large OLEDs. A good portion of this work is being performed in-house, but third parties have also come up with tool ideas. A start-up called Kateeva (read first story ever on them here) is working on a tool that creates large OLEDs with something akin to ink jet printer nozzles.

2. OLEDs Are Actually Not Late. I asked a number of companies—Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi—at CES in 2008 when we might start seeing OLED TVs priced for the mainstream. 2015 nearly all of them said. So the industry has three years to whack the price of the $8,000 TVs coming out in the second half. Three years: that’s nearly two cycles of Moore’s Law. Going by the usual rules of thumb, that means manufacturers might be able to pop out $2,000 55-inch OLED TVs for the 2015 holidays. Crazier things have happened.

3. Efficiency. OLEDs have the potential to be 100 percent efficient, say researchers at USC and other universities. While the industry isn’t there yet, the headroom gives OLED the opportunity to beat LED LCDs in lumens/images per watt and will help the industry meet any energy efficiency regulations. Car makers want electric cars to increase their fleet mileage. OLEDs will do the same for the consumer electronics industry.

4. Lateral Markets. OLEDs can also be fashioned into lights. You can transform entire walls, and even windows, into light fixtures. You may not buy them for your home right away, but the W Hotel and other hipster establishments will to create architectural showpieces. The existence of other markets will increase the investment in tool sets and manufacturing. (Regulations will also help drive the OLED lighting market.)

Conversely, TVs have also been a springboard for new types of lighting. Luxim, which makes plasma bulbs for streetlights and public spaces, started as a supplier for the projection TV industry and TV manufacturers remain one of the most ardent purchasers of red, green and blue LEDs.

5. Size Isn’t Cutting It. The TV industry is facing a problem when it comes to size. TVs simply aren’t getting bigger and bigger. Consumers graduated rapidly from 20-inch to 30-inch to 40-inch LCDs. The 40-inchers have given way to 50-inchers to some degree, but how many people do you know own 72-inch televisions?

“Definitely, I'd say the sweet spot is 46- 47-inches now, although 55 is really popular too,” said Katzmaier.

This functional ceiling on size will serve as an effective cap on revenues.

6. Competition from Costco. So how can vendors beef up margins and stave off second-tier vendors in an LCD price war? Make TVs from a new material that companies that depend on contract manufacturers can’t exploit yet! Somewhere, a guy from McKinsey charged $185,000 for the same piece of advice.

7. Design. OLEDs measure only a few millimeters thick and are flexible. Hence, manufacturers can produce curved TVs, or TVs that can be more easily embedded into walls. The can be hung up easier too or moved more easily from room-to-room. The super thin TV has been a dream for a while.

TV formats often fail. Plasma and rear-projection swooned to LEDs, even though both could tout benefits and even better image quality. Back in the early 2000s, Samsung looked at carbon nanotube TVs. Toshiba also had nano sets that died before coming to market. These efforts ultimately died because they were isolated efforts. The idea was good—the industry teamwork was not.

OLED TVs and lights have been arguably delayed and not lived up to promise, but when you pile all of the circumstances together, there are good reasons to be cautiously optimistic.