It seems that each and every day we are hearing news of another OLED product on the market, another major player in the industry announcing substantial investment or one more step towards the goal of high quality large TV screens. So what is OLED and what can it actually do for you?

OLED, or Organic Light-Emitting Diodes, is the latest technology in screen display and while there have been a couple of false starts over the last few years it seems that they are finally here to stay. The beauty of this technology is the fact that it uses organic compounds which can be manipulated to produce very high quality pictures, and they do not require a back light (like today’s TV screens) meaning that they use less power, are more friendly to the environment and much thinner than traditional TV screens.

While Sony were the first to market with an OLED TV set at the start of the year, we have seen the likes of Panasonic, Samsung and LG enter the market, promising significant capital invest in the future. All of the lead players in the industry are hard at work finding an efficient way to create larger and larger OLED screens, with many of the earlier ones unmarketable due to their size. The OLED technology is set to be this year’s big growth sector and we should see a constant flow of new products by the end of the year.

It will be interesting to see who cracks the main market because the consumer market is primed for take-up of this new technology. While prices are fairly high at the moment, as you would expect with any new technology, we should see more and more competition coming online in the short term, and prices falling to more affordable levels.