Kodak licence opens up Chinese mobile market

17 Jun 2002

Eastman Kodak has licensed its small molecule technology to Lite Array Inc of California. The licence will cover passive monochrome, multi-colour and full-colour displays. First applications will be in cell phones, personal digital assistants, audio/video boards and toys and games.
Under the agreement, Lite Array will be able to use over 60 Kodak and Sanyo patents for OLED materials, processes and device structures. Other companies licensed by Kodak include Pioneer, Sanyo and TDK.

Lite Array already has a thin film electroluminescent plant as a joint venture in Jiangmen, China, which started production earlier this year. It is the only such production line in the world.
"This agreement and the China production site positions the company for an OLED market entry late next year," said Jimin Ma, Lite Array's ceo. He says it will open the avenue for producing low power, low cost displays for high volume mobile communication devices in China. The company will target the vast mobile applications market currently dominated by LCD technology.

Market research company Display Research projects the worldwide OLED display market to increase from $2 million this year to over $2 billion in 2005, when OLED is projected to carve out a 14% market share from LCD use in both mobile phone and PDA display applications.
OLED structures are made from special organic thin films. The emitted light can be individual colours of red, green or blue or can be combined to create full-colour, high-resolution images. Proponents of the technology claim that the advantages over conventional LCD technology include faster response time, higher brightness in a variety of lighting conditions, wide viewing angles, thinner design and wide operating temperature range.