In this week's issue:

• Winners of 2007 Organic Semiconductor Awards announced >
  
• Sony to launch world's first OLED ultra-thin TV >
  
• Seiko Epson shuts down Cambridge Research Laboratory >
  
• Konarka raises $45 million in private capital financing >
  
• Toshiba to ship OLED TVs in 2009 >
  
• Sharp to take 14% stake in Pioneer >
  
• Samsung and LG Philips compete for OLED business >
  
• CMEL considers mobile TV market as target AM-OLED application >
  
• Konarka appoints Dan Williams VP of product and business development >
  
• Organic semiconductor industry market watch >
  

Top organisations recognised with Organic Semiconductor Industry Awards 2007

The Organic Semiconductor Industry Awards (OSIA), sponsored by cintelliq and in association with OSA Direct, were presented by Craig Cruickshank, CEO of cintelliq and chairman of the awards panel, at the OEC-07 Gala Dinner in Frankfurt, Germany last week.



Start-up of the Year award
Polymer Vision, a developer of rollable display enabled mobile devices, won the Start-up of the Year award. The independent panel of judges felt that Polymer Vision stood out from the other nominations in this category because it has:

• Shown great technical and commercial progress throughout the past year
• Demonstrated the necessary qualities of a good start-up, by
  • raising money
  • developing excellent technology
  • finding a lead customer
  • having the potential to become a market or technology leader

Runners up: Menippos (creator of HurraFussball an electronic trading card game) and Novaled (technology provider in OLED technologies).

Research and Development award
Cambridge Display Technology won the Research and Development award for its development of Total Matrix Addressing (TMA). The judges were particularly impressed by TMA because:

• it is an innovative solution to a challenging problem
• it has the potential to alter the economics for driving high-resolution passive-matrix
• it will benefit both small molecule and polymer devices

Runners up: LG Philips LCD for the first 15" XGA AMLCD (86ppi) panel with OTFT backplane using solution-soluble organic materials; and OLED-T for Super K Layer.

Best Peer-Review Paper award
The Best Peer-Review Paper award was won by Min-Joo Kim, Dae-Won Kim, Young Hoon Noh, Han Saem Kang, Hochul Kang, Chang-Dong Kim, and InByeong Kang from LG Philips LCD for the paper "Solution Processed Organic Thin-Film Transistors for Active Matrix Color Liquid Crystal Displays".

The judges selected Kim's paper from all those submitted to the peer review track at OEC-07 because it demonstrated:

• Great technical achievement and was an excellent paper
• Commitment by a large consumer-led company

Runners up: Tatsuo Hasegawa from the Correlated Electron Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (CERC-AIST) for the paper "On-Substrate Synthesis of Organic Metal Films, Electrodes, and Circuits"; and Jens Fuerst, D Henseler, S Tedde, and E Zaus, from Siemens AG for the paper "256 x 256 pixels active matrix photo detector combing an amorphous Silicon thin film transistor array with organic photo diodes".

www.cintelliq.com/osia     www.oec-europe.com    

Sony to launch world's first OLED ultra-thin TV

Sony has announced that it will launch an ultra-thin, flat, OLED-based TV in December. Called the XEL-1, the 11-inch OLED TV has a thickness of just 3mm and will go on sale in Japan on 1 December.

The $82 billion TV market is currently dominated by LCD and plasma models. Sony is the world's No.2 LCD TV maker behind Samsung Electronics. Sony plans to sell the XEL-1 for 200,000 yen ($1,740), which is nearly as expensive as some of its own 40-inch LCD models. Executive Deputy President Katsumi Ihara told reporters that he set the 200,000 yen price tag without paying much attention to profitability, which suggests that Sony will make a loss for each set it sells, at least in the initial stage.

XEL-1 Technical specifications
Pixel resolution	QHD (960H x 540V)
Contrast ratio	1,000,000:1
Panel size (effective picture)	251mm x 141 mm (287 mm diagonal)
Power consumption (stand-by)	45W (0.84W)
Weight	2.0Kg
Lifetime (viewing hours)	30,000 hours (equivalent to 10 years viewing at 8 hours per day)

Monthly production will come to just 2,000 units. In comparison, Sony plans to sell 10 million units of LCD TVs in the year to next March.

Sony President Ryoji Chubachi said, "I want this world's first OLED TV to be the symbol of the revival of Sony's technological prowess. I want this to be the flag under which we charge forwards to turn the fortunes around."

www.sony.jp    

Seiko Epson shuts down Cambridge Research Laboratory

Seiko Epson shut down its Cambridge Research Laboratory on Monday of this week. All the staff were made redundant with immediate effect. There has so far been no official statement from the company.

www.cambridge.epson.co.uk    

Konarka raises $45 million in private capital financing

Konarka Technologies has raised $45 million in private capital financing. The financing was led by Mackenzie Financial Corporation, and by existing investor, Good Energies. Other lead investors participating in the round include:

• Pegasus Capital
• Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ)
• Asenqua Ventures
• New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
• 3i

Rick Hess, president and CEO of Konarka, said, "Konarka has aggressive plans to accelerate the development and commercialization of our polymer-based organic photovoltaic (OPV) technologies for consumer, commercial, BIPV and electronic applications. This latest round of financing will help to accelerate our plan to bring Konarka's organic photovoltaic material, Power Plastic, to market."

www.konarka.com     www.mackenziefinancial.com     www.goodenergies.com    

Toshiba to ship OLED TVs in 2009

Following Sony's announcement of the XEL-1, Toshiba has announced that it plans to begin selling TVs with OLED screens as soon as the panels are ready. A company spokeswoman said that the first Toshiba OLED television sets should hit the market in 2009.

www.toshiba.com    

Sharp to take 14% stake in Pioneer

Sharp is to buy about $357 million worth of new shares from Pioneer and work with its loss-making rival in developing DVD players, car electronics and display technology.

Sharp is a strong player in the fast-growing flat TV market, but Pioneer has been losing money because it lacks the scale to make its products as efficiently as Matsushita Electric Industrial or LG Electronics.

Pioneer will issue 30 million shares to Sharp, raising 41.4 billion yen ($357.3 million) and making Sharp its top shareholder with a stake of 14.3%. Sharp, in turn, will allot 10 million treasury shares to Pioneer for 19.7 billion yen.

The mutual holding of shares between Japanese companies is used to cement business relationships as well as to protect against takeovers, although the practice is often criticised as an inefficient use of capital.

Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management, commented, "This is more a matter of helping Pioneer than anything else. It doesn't seem as if it's positive for Sharp. What it basically means is that Pioneer can't go it alone."

sharp-world.com     pioneer.jp    

Samsung and LG Philips compete for OLED business

Samsung SDI will start producing a two-inch AM-OLED for use in mobile telephones at its plant in Cheonan, Korea, from mid-October and also has plans to expand the production.

A spokesman for Samsung SDI said that the maximum capacity of its production line is 1.5 million units per month and that it will add additional production lines in response to market demand. He confirmed that the company has already received pre-orders from 10 local and overseas mobile manufacturers.

LG Electronics is also considering expanding its AM-OLED production capacity by as much as 2.4 million units per year in the longer term, according to company sources. LG Electronics shut down its PM-OLED line in July due to low profits and has been in talks to convert the old line to AM-OLED production.

LG.Philips LCD, a joint venture with Dutch-based Philips, will start full production of three-inch AM OLEDs by the end of the year or early next year. In addition LG Philips is in final negotiations to take over the OLED division from LG Electronics.

www.samsungsdi.com     www.lgphilips-lcd.com    

CMEL considers mobile TV market as target AM-OLED application

According to an article in Digitimes, Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL) sees mobile TVs as a likely market for AM-OLED panels.

The yield rate for large-size AM-OLED panels is still low so CMEL is continuing to focus on 10-inch and smaller products. However the company expects that AM-OLED will become the key technology for mobile TV applications in two to three years time.

CMEL emphasised that the company will not completely halt development of large-size AM-OLED panels, adding that it may start producing large-size AM-OLED panels in 2009. The company also expects to ship 8.1-inch AM-OLED panels in the second half of 2008.

www.cmel.com.tw    

Konarka appoints Dan Williams VP of product and business development

Konarka Technologies has appointed Dan Williams as VP of product and business development. Williams will direct growth and application development of the company's proprietary Power Plastic® photovoltaic material, ready for market commercialisation.

Before joining Konarka, Williams managed the Boston office of the design and engineering consultancy Product Development Technologies. Prior to that, he held senior design positions at Reebok and Motorola.

www.konarka.com    

Organic semiconductor industry market watch

Following its acquisition by Sumitomo Chemical, the share price of Cambridge Display Technology will no longer be tracked in the Market Watch.

Week ending 28 September 2007

Luxell priced in Canadian Dollars, Thin Film Electronics priced in Norwegian Kroner

www.nasdaq.com     www.otcbb.com     www.londonstockexchange.com     www.tsx.com     otc.nfmf.no