PC Advisor: Samsung SDI has announced plans to expand production of organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays this year.
The company, in which Samsung Electronics holds a 20 percent stake, will invest 551.8 billion won (0.33 billion Euro) to increase production between now and June next year, it said in a regulatory filing with the Korea Stock Exchange today.
OLED is an emerging flat-panel display technology that uses an organic material in the pixels that emits its own light, so a backlight isn’t needed. That helps make the displays thinner and much less power-hungry. OLED screens also handle fast-moving images better and offer richer colour reproduction than current LCDs and plasma displays.
The screens are already used for some mobile phones and other portable gadgets, like MP3 players, that need small screens. Screen makers are trying to extend the technology to larger screens suitable for television sets but they remain difficult to produce.
Last year Sony became the first company to put on sale a commercial OLED-based television.
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Andrew | Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 12:09
The real question is why? They continue to have yield problems, and are struggling to make money on product completed because of the yield issue. It has been rumored that they were looking for a partner for this expansion…probably a large customer or OEM, but this looks like they didn’t find anyone who wnated to step up. Others (CMEL, etc) have done a far better job on the production side, building smalller runs for specific customer needs. Its surprising the Samsung, as it dominates many other technologies and industrial segments, can seem to get this one to work.