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Emerging Lighting Technology03-24-15 | News

Emerging Lighting Technology

One prominent use of organic light emitting diode technology (OLED) is the FOLED (flexible organic light emitting diode), which incorporates a flexible plastic substrate in the mix, making rollable displays possible.

We all know about LEDs, but what is OLED? OLED is organic light-emitting diode (OLED), i.e., an LED that places an organic compound layer between two electrodes through which light is emitted via an electric current.

IDTechEx Ltd., has produced a 330 page report: "OLED Lighting Opportunities 2015-2025: Forecasts, Technologies, Players". The report covers both LED and OLED lighting technologies, assessing the fabrication processes, material compositions, technology roadmaps and key players.

A few bullet points from IDTechEx's report summary:

• OLED lighting is an emerging solid-state lighting technology, but this lighting market is complex, highly fragmented space because of the broad technology mix and a diversity of customer needs.

• The markets for OLEDs include residential, office, industrial, outdoor, hospitality, shop and automotive, but architectural, hospitality and shop segments will be the first to grow, and residential, office and outdoor lighting will follow later, once costs decrease and lifetime is prolonged.

• OLEDs have the potential to efficiently emit warm light across large surfaces and to bring new and novel form factors into the lighting sector.

• IDTechEx forecasts the OLED market will grow to 1.9 billion USD in 2025 (optimistic scenario). The market growth will however be very slow until 2019 where the overall sales at panel level will remain below 200 million USD globally.

• The report provides the latest industry updates and profiles on players in the industry: Panasonic, LG Chem, Osram, Phillips Lighting and Sumitomo Chemical.

Market assessment

The second part provides a detailed assessment of the market. Here, we provide ten-year market forecast segmented by lighting sector at the panel level. Our market forecasts are expressed in value, area coverage and also equivalent unit numbers. We also provide cost projections in $ per sqm and $ per klm split by the layer (OLED materials, encapsulations, integrated substrates, etc).

Moreover, we provide critical assessments of the value proposition of OLED technology in each lighting sector and use our analysis to build up our market share forecasts in each segment. Here, we analyse parameters such as light quality, technology mix diversity, price sensitivity, light controllability, lifetime and light intensity.