By Chris Connery – Vice President, PC and Large Format Commercial Displays and Jennifer Colegrove – Director, Display Technologies
We could have seen this coming… When TV makers began marketing LED-backlit LCD TVs as “LED TVs,” DisplaySearch and others recognized that this opened up the possibility for confusion, especially with totally unrelated technologies like OLED on the verge of mass-market breakthrough. As flat panel displays become widespread in TV and PC markets, buyers and marketers, as well as consumers, can find some of the new technologies confusing. With nearly 1,750 stores in the US, Target is a mainstream mass merchandiser; while not known for carrying IT products such as PCs and peripherals, Target is offering more products in this market like many mass merchants, and they carry a range of products via its website beyond what it offers in stores.
It is well recognized that, when marketing to consumers, brands and advertisers can only get across a few key points. So the use of “LED TV” and more recently “LED monitors” (LCD desktop monitors that use LED backlights to allow for thin, energy efficient form factors) was going to be a point of confusion for consumers. Such is evidenced by the recent promotion by Target.com of a 22″ widescreen “OLED” monitor.
Figure 1: From the Target Website
The acronym OLED stands for organic light emitting diode, a form of emissive display that is built using organic materials. LED stands for light emitting diode, which generally refers to inorganic semiconductor devices that emit light, now being used as backlight sources in LCDs. LEDs and OLEDs are entirely different, but unfortunately for many, they sound very alike. The OLED display market has grown rapidly over the past several quarters, but most OLED displays in the market are less than 5″ diagonal, with only a few larger OLED products in the market at this moment. The largest active matrix (AM) OLED display product is the 15″ OLED TV from LG Electronics. This 15″ OLED TV is selling in only a few markets around the world and goes for over $2,600!
DisplaySearch forecasts that >20″ AMOLED displays will enter the market over the next year, largely focused on TV applications. Desktop monitors using AMOLEDs larger than 20″ will take at least an additional year, due to technical limitations. For example, OLEDs do not do as well showing the mostly white, static backgrounds used by PC operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS, as they do showing mostly-black background content or full-moition video. Also, OLEDs have some limitations with blue materials and differential aging of colors. When OLEDs do enter the desktop monitor market, prices are expected to be closer to $2,000 than the $229 price of the LED-backlit LCD monitor advertised by Target.
When will products like an AMOLED desktop monitor actually reach the market? Are the barriers to large-scale AMOLED production surmountable? Can OLED displays catch the moving LCD target? These and other OLED questions will be addressed in the “OLED Displays and Lighting” session at the SID DisplaySearch Business Conference on May 24 in Seattle. Please join us.
