Toshiba discontinues OLED production

Toshibaoled

The development of organic LED displays in home entertainment faced a huge setback, as Toshiba announced that it won't pursue OLED production anymore. Toshiba, together with Panasonic, spent over $190 million to set up an OLED manufacturing facility in the Ishikawa prefecture of Japan two years ago. Toshiba is bowing out of the research and production of OLED displays, focusing on LCD screens instead. Any OLED development from Toshiba from this point on will be for lighting only.

OLED technology has long been hailed as the next step in HDTV displays. Unfortunately, it simply hasn't caught on in any significant sense. Several concept OLED screens have been released over the past few years, like Sony's XEL-1, but they've been too small and too expensive to be used in home theaters. So far, OLEDs have only seen significant use in mobile devices. With Toshiba leaving the OLED field, the technology's future in home entertainment is uncertain at best.

Will Greenwald

[Source: CrunchGear]

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