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JULY 2008 W2 ALERT Japan Government Spearheads Joint Technology Initiative with Key Industry Players to Develop Large-Scale OLED TechnologyMove seen as an effort to help Japanese manufacturers keep lead in global television business<Nikkei-TOKYO><Wall Street Journal><July 10, 2008>According to several press reports including stories from both the Nikkei and the Wall Street Journal, the Japanese government has announced a joint technology venture involving at least ten Japanese manufacturers to develop a large-size OLED television product with at least a 40-inch screen size. With OLED widely viewed as the “next big thing” in video technology, this announcement is seen by many as an effort by the Japanese government to keep Japanese industry at the forefront of the television business.
OLED, or organic light-emitting diode technology, employs ultra-thin layers of chemicals that can emit light and allows for the production of an extremely thin television set as the backlighting that traditional LED televisions require is not needed. OLED sets can be hung on a wall like a poster and generally bent or flexed in ways that no television up to now could be.
The only OLED product on the market right now is a model introduced by Sony last year called the XEL-1. With an 11-inch screen and a $2,500 price tag, the XEL-1 is more a market experiment than a real contributor to Sony’s sales. Still the 3mm thick screen is stunningly thin and the unit tends to draw a crowd wherever it’s shown. Still, most industry observers believe that the unit will need a much larger screen size and a much reduced price-point before consumers will consider it anything other than an interesting oddity.
The technology alliance announcement came from the government-connected New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) which has committed to fund the venture at the rate of ¥700 million a year (approximately $6.5 million at today’s exchange rate of 107.07 yen to dollar) for the first five years. Some analysts say that this amount of investment is way too little to make an impact in what many feel will be a very expensive development process.
 Companies participating in the project include Sony Corp., Sharp Corp., Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Idemitsu Kosan Co., Sumitomo Chemical Co., Choshu Industry Co., JSR Corp, Shimadzu Corp., Dainippon  Screen Mfg. Co., and Hitachi Zosen Corp. The participants include not only equipment manufacturers, but also materials producers and suppliers. NEDO hopes that including all pertinent disciplines will speed a solution.
This new announcement harkens back to the post-World War II period of Japan’s history, when an agency of the Japanese government called the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) emerged as a powerful force in organizing Japanese industry, directing and funding industrial research and setting industrial policy. Many credit MITI with helping Japan to become a global economic powerhouse within a few short years. In 2001, MITI was subsumed into the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). |
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