The biggest buzz so far at the Consumer Electronics Show comes from the new OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) televisions from the giant South Korean manufacturer Samsung.
Production costs had previously limited the size of OLED screens, which is why consumers mostly found them in cellular phones, and the only commercially available OLED television model had been the Sony XEL-1, an 11-inch model that debuted at the 2007 CES with a price of $2,500.
Samsung’s new televisions feature a 55-inch screen, an absurd 0.6-inch width, and a richness of color never before seen in commercial displays.
Check out the video and see for yourself. 3D TVs were a huge bust, but now these new super-thin TVs should generate some serious buzz.
OLED TVs will be the next big (small, really) thing to come to your living room. The tech will cost you, though. When Sony first announced it’s 11-inch OLED TV, the unit cost $2,500. LG wants to offer something bigger, though, and you can bet it will have a bigger price tag.
LG has previously shown off 15- and 19-inch models with hefty price tags, but it will introduce a 20-inch model later this year. Next year it will bump that up to 30 inches and in 2012 we’ll get a 40-inch OLED TV. As you can imagine, those things are going to be expensive. As the company’s VP, Won Kim, said, “They may be expensive, but it will be possible to buy a 40-inch class OLED TV in 2012.”
So if you want something that basically looks like you’ve hung some paper on your wall, albeit very high tech paper, and have $10,000 or so to throw around, LG just might have the OLED TV for you.
According to several sources, Apple has been buying up every 10″ screen it can, in both LCD and OLED varieties. The company is buying so many, in fact, that there really aren’t any left.
“We were designing a product for a customer and we needed 10 inch screens, but we’ve been trying for months and can’t get one from any of the Asian suppliers,” an anonymous designer told TG Daily at CES. It’s not the first time Apple has done this, either. If you remember when the iPod was first getting started, there were zero 3.5″ drives available for the rest of the world.
The source said, surprise, it’s for the Apple tablet! I’m not really sure what else it would be for so that’s likely a safe bet. As for timing, though, it could point to a late Q1/early Q2 release instead of later in the year.
Earlier this weekend, tweets started showing up from Google employees about a new phone. The new phone. The Google Phone. I wrote about it last month, based on a report from TechCrunch that claimed we’d see it in early 2010. Google has given the phone, which is made by HTC, to wide array of workers to field test it, or as the Google blog calls it, dogfooding.
From what few pics are available, the phone looks great. It’s got a sizable OLED screen, runs on a Snapdragon, and thankfully has no hardware keyboard. I’m not just excited about the hardware, though. Google has designed the entire experience here, something I’ve waited for them to do since Android launched. Sure, they’ve contributed on the UI for the G1 and the Droid, but this is the whole package, all from Google. They’ll be selling the device directly as an unlocked GSM device. That means T-Mobile or AT&T, to be released some time in early (likely January) 2010.
One of the earliest tweets says this: “Google Phone = iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel. Great touch screen, and Android.” Is this really comparable to the iPhone, or is it something completely different?
If you’ve been sitting on your next TV purchase for that glut of OLED TVs to flood the market, you shouldn’t. LG’s VP of OLED sales and marketing, Won Kim, says prices won’t come down to LCD levels until 2016. Seven years is a long way off, and so much can change that Kim might be wrong, but in any case, OLEDs won’t be reasonable anytime soon.
Kim’s statements came shortly after LG announced a 15-inch OLED TV for its Korean market at the end of this year. No announcement for the US market, and that’s sort of been the standard so far. Only Sony sells an OLED stateside, and it’s just 11-inches. So it’s not just market prices we’re waiting on – the whole system has to mature enough to even be able to deliver the product.
Kim did say we would see 40-inch OLEDs by something like 2012, but you can bet they’ll be expensive. Of course by then who’s to say LCDs and Plasmas won’t be nearly as good as an OLED? The “absolute black” that makes the OLED so attractive (among some other features) is nearly attainable now with dimming LED TVs. In seven year this generation of technology could come a long way.
