Panasonic and Sony team up to produce OLED

Recently Matsushita was busy with Fujitsu and merged its SoC business. At the same time, Sony announced that it planned to set up a joint venture company for the production of OLED panels. According to the Japanese media Sankei Shimbun, Sony and Panasonic have already negotiated. The OLED panel company will be established in 2013. Besides Sony and Matsushita, the Japanese government official fund "Industrial Innovation Agency (INCJ)" also plans to invest.

According to reports, the OLED panels produced by the joint venture company will be sold to external manufacturers for use in addition to Sony and Panasonic TVs and commercial displays. However, the details of the joint venture's investment and plant sites will be considered. To continue the follow-up negotiations. The report pointed out that Sony and Panasonic had announced in June (2012) that they would jointly develop OLED panels. This time, they plan to expand the cooperation relationship from “R&D” to “Production” in order to increase international competitiveness.

Sony and Panasonic released a joint news release on June 25, 2012, announcing that they will work together to develop next-generation OLED panels for TVs/large-size displays. The goal is to establish the mass production technology for next-generation OLED panels in 2013.

In addition to Panasonic, Sony is currently working with Taiwan's AUO to develop OLED panels. At this year's CES, Sony demonstrated the world's first tester for the largest 56-inch 4K (3840 x 2160) OLED TV. The 56-inch 4K OLED TV tester was developed by Sony and AUO. OLED panel.

South Korea’s LG Electronics has stated that it will start selling OLED TVs in March (2013) (has been opened for pre-order in January), and Samsung Electronics may also launch OLED TVs in the first half of this year. However, the Sankei Shimbun reported on January 28 that according to a securities analyst, due to the fact that current OLED TV prices cannot be lowered to a level acceptable to the market, Korean manufacturers may face a fate of failure.

Nikkei News reported on February 15 that there were currently only 100 or more pre-orders for LG Electronics’ 55-inch OLED TVs pre-ordered on January 2 in South Korea. The Nikkei pointed out that for the Korean market, orders for more than 100 units in one and a half months can be said to be "very small." The Nikkei said that the LG 55-inch OLED TV is priced at 11 million won (about 950,000 yen) and its price is about 3 times that of a 55-inch LCD TV. Therefore, the current sales volume is unlikely to increase.

Micro point of view:
@7th Heaven: Panasonic was really busy. Behind the various joint ventures was its weak performance.

@Enchanted: Did the OLED era really come?

@ White socks: Think of Panasonic's closure of the Shanghai Plasma Factory last year, and indeed OLED and 4K are the trends!