An announcement by Pioneer that it has solved the problem of creating organic electroluminescence (OLED) flat panel displays is not a significant breakthrough, it has emerged. OLED technology is far cheaper to produce than TFT technology but there are technical difficulties to implementing it, especially in the notebook field. A US startup, Universal Display Corporation (UDC), is about to beat them to the punch while there are still problems with Pioneer's implementation of OLED. Bob Raikes, senior analyst at Meko Research, said Pioneer's announcement that its OLED was suitable for notebooks and PDAs, but that while it had solved one problem with colour, the problem with the life of OLEDs was still unresolved. He said: "It hasn't solved one of the major problems which is the 2,000 hours problem, the OLED has. Pioneer has got over one of the hurdles which is to create blue, but still hasn't got over the lifetime problem." That, said Raikes, should be a mininum of 10,000 hours and preferably 20,000 hours. However, he said: "UDC has got some very efficient OLED technology and is working with Princeton." ®