According to the Nikkei Daily, Toshiba is scrapping its plans to mass produce OLED displays. Toshiba and Panasonic joined forces in 2008 to form Toshiba Mobile Display and began laying down plans to add OLED manufacturing to a Toshiba-run production plant in northern Japan. After investing almost 16 billion yen ($191.6 million), those plans were put on hold, according to Toshiba Mobile Display spokesperson Masahiro Kume, who said,
“The plan (for mass-production) is currently frozen. We’ll review the production plan again from scratch.”
This decision was made in response to a slow down in demand for OLED displays and a concurrent rise in the demand for LCD displays. Toshiba’s poor financial performance was also a mitigating factor.
All is not lost as the resources and personnel allocated for OLED production will now be put towards LCD production. Originally, this new production line was expected to deliver 1.5 million OLED displays for smartphones. With a switch over to LCD, perhaps that same volume can be applied to Super LCD panels and we will see a bounty of smartphones and feature phones with Super LCDs in the next few years.
Speaking of AMOLEDs and LCDs, does anyone prefer the retina display of the iPhone or the Super LCD of the Desire over the Super AMOLED of the Galaxy S? If you are not sure, then check out our recent display shoot-out where all three display technologies go head-to-head.
[Via Reuters]