OLED TV sales to soar, says market watcher
But won't match plasma - let alone LCD - until 2017
Sales of OLED TVs will skyrocket between now and 2016. The bad news for OLED watchers is that a compound annual growth rate of 140 per cent still leaves the technology behind plasma let alone LCD.
The growth forecast comes from market watcher DisplaySearch, which today predicted that, come 2016, OLED TVs will yield revenues totalling $2.37bn for their manufacturers.
That's up from a mere $2m in 2009, DisplaySearch said. Almost all of those will presumably be Sony's expensive Xel-1.
OLED is seen as the successor to today's LCD and plasma HD TVs, delivering superior colour and much better energy efficiency than current technologies. The snag: for now, at least, making big OLED TVs is colossally expensive.
But surely by 2016 some advances will have been made?
This is unlikely, ccording to DisplaySearch's numbers.
Compare, for example, OLED TV revenues - $2.37bn - with the $37.12bn that LCD TV sales will generate for display makers. That's an order of magnitude more.
Even plasma panels - long held to be on the decline, out-evolved by improved, cheaper LCDs - will, according to DisplaySearch, yielded $3.41bn in 2016 - 32.5 per cent more than OLED.
But OLED will surpass plasma soon after. DisplaySearch has plasma revenues declining by seven per cent year on year, compounded through to 2016, so OLED should push past plasma in 2017 or 2018.
LCD's compound annual growth rate will fall to zero through to 2016, but the sheer scale of sales means t will be a long time before OLED mounts a serious challenge. ®
Special Report
Telly vision: future display technologies
COMMENTS
Product price and power price
OLEDs will be monumentally expensive in the beginning, there's no doubt about that. But remember how expensive (and small) plasma televisions were when they first came out? And let's not pretend that LCD was cheap, either. One thing I'm having a hard time understanding is the power usage of plasma and LCD (which were claimed to be energy-efficient compared to CRT). It seems that a lot of companies (I'm looking at you, Samsung) don't even list the power usage in their spec sheets. Those that do aren't exactly power-friendly. Take the Mitsibishi LT-52246 52-inch LCD TV, for example, which is listed at 330W. Compare that with Mitsubishi's L65-A90 65-inch LaserVue TV which is listed at 135W, or the Mitsubishi WD-65737(65-inch) or WD-82737 (82-inch) DLP projection TVs which are both listed at 218W. Hopefully OLED will be much less power-hungry than plasma or LCD, similar to (or better than) the LaserVue.
What's that Billy?
Jesus H Fucking CHRIST!
People get paid to point out the obvious? Had they spent more than a week in even the most basic business school they would have seen how ANY NEW PRODUCT evolves.
Early adopters (innovaters, trendsetters) when the product is new and expensive, economies of scale (assuming it's applicable) brings price down and the plateau of "normal" purchasers set in, then finally the laggards as it tails off.
OLED is better than LCD and Plasma, were it not to start selling more I'd be fucking astounded.
And sell MORE only AFTER selling some.. that's fucking brilliant, give that man a medal!
I'm off to go scrape the remainders of my brain out into the toilet pan so I can enter a fruitful career as a market forecaster or consultant.
Who? What?
Who's going to be digging this report up in 2016 to see if it's right?
LCD, CRT, OLED
I have just bought a replacement 26" CRT after my last one died, ok it only cost me £10 so didn't owe me anything.
I have spent a lot of time watching LCD tv's in the likes of Curries, Dixons, Richer Sounds and Sony shops and am still not impressed with the quality of SD images. Ok HD and animation/games looks superb but normal tv looks awful.
OLED on the otherhand is amazing. I saw a small OLED tv in a Sony shop and was blown away by the quality and clarity.
I am just hoping that I can keep on buying cheap CRT's until the price of LCD's either comes down to less that a small 2nd hand car or the quality improves enough for me to open up my misers wallet as I don't think I can wait long enough for OLED to become cheap.
OLEDs are crap.
They fail after a far too short time to be any use.
