The Korean giants' race to be first in the shops with superthin organic electroluminescent TVs seems to be slowing – which means there might even be some chance for the big Japanese names to catch up. Or just ever-thinner TVs fighting over ever-slimmer pickings...
As revelations go, the one from Japan's Nikkei earlier this week wasn't exactly a biggie. With a week to go until the end of 2012, and not a sniff of next-generation TVs in the shops, the prediction that 'South Korea's two major television makers are unlikely to release organic electroluminescent TVs by year-end as they had planned' looks like something of a safe bet.
Trouble is, like most new technologies, OEL – as we seem to be calling it this week, though you may know it as OLED – is proving a bit tricky to scale up from prototype or test-production runs to full industrial scale.
The technology may be tempting, with its superthin screens and supersharp resolution and contrast thanks to its self-illuminating technology – unlike LCD screens, which need some form of backlighting, usually from LEDs these days – , and lower power consumption.
But it's proving hard to get sufficient yield in manufacturing to make the TVs profitable.
In other words, they're having to throw away too many substandard screens, and that makes every display passing muster pricey to produce, with 'sources close to the matter' telling the Nikkei that had Samsung gone ahead and launched OEL TVs in the last quarter of this year, it would have lost money on every set sold.
