UDC to Remain Key Player in OLED Materials Market, Finds NanoMarkets

16 Aug 2012 • by Natalie Aster

OLEDs have broken through in the past 18 months, and there is renewed hope in the industry that OLEDs will finally live up to their long-promised potential.

Full color, AMOLED displays are now part of the mainstream, with Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone products leading the way. OLED TVs appear (finally) ready for commercialization in the next year or so. OLED-based lighting is also already on the market; although these products consist almost entirely of luxury lighting at the present time, large lighting panels for offices may just might be the next big thing in the lighting market.

One materials company – Universal Display (UDC) – seems to be benefitting strongly from these trends. UDC has pioneered phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) technology for quite a few years now and it is widely accepted that only the use of PHOLEDs will enable OLEDs to reach the efficiencies required for truly deep penetration by OLED technology.

Already, almost all commercially available AMOLED products already employ PHOLED technology, with only the blue PHOLED emitters still lagging (a bit) in lifetime performance. And there can be no doubt that UDC is a huge beneficiary from this situation.

The new report "OLED Materials Markets 2012" by NanoMarkets states that nearly all of the important OLED manufacturers are already UDC licensees, including Samsung, which currently makes more than 90% of the OLEDs in the world. Other UDC licensees include LG, Lumiotec, AUO, Chi Mei/Innolux, Panasonic Idemitsu Lighting, Pioneer, Konica Minolta, Philips, Sony, and NEC.

Report Details:

OLED Materials Markets 2012
Published: July, 2012
Pages: 112
Price: US$ 2.995,00

Understandably, in the suddenly booming state of the OLED industry, other firms would like to be in the PHOLED space too. Duksan and Sun Fine Chemical are two possible contenders in this space, for example. It is also well understood that the only effective way to undermine UDC’s dominance in the OLED materials market is weaken UDC’s IP position. Based on this understanding, patent challenges – some successful, others not – have been brought in Japan, Korea, and the EU.

NanoMarkets believes that the most likely scenario is that UDC will remain a key player in the OLED materials market for the foreseeable future; and the dominant player in its chosen niche for some time to come. The facts of the case are that (1) only some of the UDC IP – and not the key¬ patents – is under attack; or at least this is what UDC says, (2) in most geographies, UDC patents remain unchallenged so far.

More information can be found in the report “OLED Materials Markets 2012” by NanoMarkets.

To order the report or ask for sample pages contact [email protected]

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