March 2012

---

OLED Lighting in a Low-Growth World

While the growth rates in the countries that are likely to be the sources of the overwhelming majority of the demand for OLED lighting will inevitably rise and fall over the next decade, the likelihood is that the high growth rates that existed in the economy when OLED lighting was first thought up are not going to reoccur for some time.

And with that in mind, NanoMarkets believes that it is certainly time to rethink our forecasts for the OLED lighting market in a lower economic growth world going forward.

January 2012

---

UDC’s Prospects in the OLED World to Come

In this article NanoMarkets considers the strengths and potential vulnerabilities of Universal Display (UDC) as the OLED market evolves from small displays to television and lighting.  In the short term NanoMarkets sees great upside for UDC but longer term the company can expect more serious challenges that could derail its success.

October 2011

---

OLED Lighting Materials

Development of OLED technology for lighting markets is not as mature as for displays, but NanoMarkets still expects this sector to grow dramatically over the coming decade.  And because OLED lighting panels are likely to be a (1) a mass market and (2) consist of panels a lot larger than the average OLED displays, the market for OLED lighting materials should ultimately be a lot larger than those for materials in the display sector.  However, much more risk is associated with the lighting sector, for materials suppliers and just about everyone else.

NanoMarkets believes that materials suppliers will play a big role in whether the OLED lighting industry booms or settles into a niche pattern.  For real, sustained growth in OLED lighting, new, better materials and processes are needed to enable this growth.

Investment Opportunities in the OLED Encapsulation Business

After many years of languishing, OLEDs have finally emerged as a real market, and the opportunities for growth are great, especially for firms that can offer encapsulation technologies with tangible performance and cost benefits over the market-dominant cover glass strategies in use today.

Where Are the Opportunities for OLED Encapsulation Materials?

OLEDs are highly vulnerable to oxygen and water vapor, so they present an encapsulation issue; developments to improve barrier performance have been discussed in the OLED industry since its earliest days. Until recently, however, OLED encapsulation materials represented a relatively small market for chemical companies and a few startups. For many years there were few signs that OLEDs were going to break out of their niche market pattern, with almost all of the OLED market being accounted for by passive matrix displays for MP3 payers, cell phone sub-displays, etc.

The situation was further complicated by the popular notion among OLED manufacturers that encapsulation was the least of their worries, since most OLEDs could be successfully encapsulated in a stack that often also included desiccant under glass using epoxy adhesives for edge sealing. The simple glass and epoxy encapsulation approach was not only all that was required for small displays, it was all that display makers were willing to pay for, and it continues to be the principal encapsulation strategy in place today.

Even as the size of the passive matrix OLED business grew, true opportunities for OLED encapsulation were highly limited, and few materials firms were able to sustain a business based on encapsulation materials alone.  And although materials suppliers were initially happy to supply these applications, they did so with the expectation that markets large enough to justify their efforts would eventually emerge.

Real Opportunities in OLED Materials Markets

NanoMarkets predicts that the OLED materials market will increase from $317 million in 2011 to just over $5 billion in 2018, with revenues from cathode, anode and encapsulation materials gaining in importance over the period. This strong growth is fueled by a sea change in the status of the OLED industry.  For many years, the industry has been plagued with the low volume/high price conundrum for several years.  But that that situation appears to be changing, according to NanoMarkets’ recent report, Markets for OLED Materials-2011.  

September 2011

---

OLED Lighting Manufacturing’s Future?

There are some commentators (without any demonstrated history in this market ) who apparently believe that OLED lighting will never get beyond the luxury market.  Today, for example, you can buy OLED lighting from a very high-end furniture store such as Roche Bobois and some analysts believe that is where they are going to stay.

NanoMarkets are not in this group of analysts and, more importantly, it seems safe to assume that it is unlikely that firms of the caliber of GE, LG, Osram, Panasonic Philips, Samsung and so on would have gone into the OLED lighting business with luxury luminaires made by craft workers solely in mind.  Almost certainly, their assumption is that eventually OLED lighting will reach a point where it is generally affordable and that, along with LEDs and CFLs, OLED lighting will be used widely in general illumination applications.

May 2011

---

Opportunities for OLED Lighting in Asia

The whole of Asia must be considered a major opportunity area for the OLED lighting business.  Most of the countries in Asia are experiencing high economic growth and their manufacturing sectors are—generally speaking—moving to increasing levels of technological sophistication, both in terms of the products they supply and the kinds of manufacturing technology they deploy:.  Each country, of course, has its own demographics, its own opportunities and different timeframes for realizing those opportunities, as well as particularities in terms of market needs and the regulations impacting the OLED lighting market.  Each country also has a different story with regard to the size and sophistication of its indigenous OLED manufacturing sector and how that sector is likely to evolve going forward.

November 2010

---

Making the Business Case for OLED Lighting

With new companies entering the OLED lighting business seemingly every month, it is increasingly vital to go beyond the hype and identify why the world really needs OLED lighting and how the manufacturing and marketing of OLED lighting can generate new business revenues.  Certainly even a casual look at the OLED lighting space so far suggests that there are at least four reasons to be skeptical about OLED lighting’s prospects:

May 2010

---

OLED Lighting Timetables: Product Evolution and Revenue Generation

NanoMarkets believes that the market for OLED lighting will result in billions of dollars of revenues by the middle of this decade.  For now, however, the OLED light is a high-priced niche – or even novelty – item.  In this article – based on NanoMarkets’ latest research – we explain how we think that the OLED lighting market will get to be so big.

Page 1 of 2 pages

 1 2 >