vnunet.com analysis: Sony OLED TV gets mixed reaction

Sony will begin selling the world's first full-sized organic LED (OLED) TV in December, the Japanese company announced today.

OLED displays have long been touted as a potential successor to LCD screens, because the technology offers greater brightness, better colour reproduction and lower power consumption.

However, manufacturing difficulties have limited OLED use to small screens in a handful of products like mobile phones.

Sony claimed in the announcement that OLED displays boast a structure that enables "unprecedented levels of thinness and lightweight design".

OLED also delivers "advanced levels of contrast and brightness, wide colour reproduction range and rapid response time to realise stunning picture quality" .

The 11in XEL-1 TV will have an official list price of ¥200,000 ($1,735). By comparison, a 19in LCD TV (the closest size to 11in generally available) costs between $300 and $450.

"Sony's OLED displays are certainly beautiful, but we think that they have yet to truly rock the market," said Nomura Securities analyst Eiichi Katayama in a briefing to clients.

Katayama believes that, based on the published specifications, the displays "clearly outshine existing products in terms of picture quality".

"Pixel resolution is only 960 x 540, but image quality here is more than the sum of its pixels," he added.

"A 27in model is already in the offing, but the real issue for now will be getting the TVs to a size where the slimness of the display becomes a real draw. "

Analysts have also called on Sony to integrate new technologies more fully into its product line-up.

"We think that resurrecting the Sony technology story will depend on creating a climate at the company in which it can generate truly striking products that can find suitable applications for ultra flat-panel displays," said Katayama.