01.10.06
Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED)
About five years ago, in an engineering chemistry class, I had a professor who liked to go on abstracts and talk about the work and research he was doing. The most interesting story that I heard in his class was about the work a colleague of his at Cambridge Display Technology was doing.
His story went something like this: he was visiting his colleague at Cambridge, who was excited to show him something new they were working on. He went into his office, and they shut the door, and cleared off the desk. His colleague then opened a large cardboard tube and pulled out a rolled up sheet of plastic and laid it on his desk.
After pushing a button, the sheet of plastic then lit up and showed a high resolution black and white video. This technology has since evolved into high definition full colour television, paper thin, and can be printed using an ink jet process. OLED displays draw less than half the power required by current LCD technology, do not require a backlight as they are electroluminescent, and are able to display a true black pixel, and will have an infinite contrast ratio. It’s the future. Check out this link for more info on OLED technology.
So, a couple months back I was doing research on my stocks, as I always do, and came across OLED. I freaked out. It was at a little under 5 dollars for Cambridge Display Technology (OLED) — the same company I had this information about. At the time though, I had no more funds left in my Ameritrade account to make a buy and left it for a little while. Since then, the stock has more than doubled with good test result reports. According to the data compiled by the Society for Information Display, by 2008 the world market for OLED display technology could reach up to $8 billion annually.
World OLED market:
2003: $251 million
2004: $408 million
2008: $3 billion – $8 billion
Although it’s a gamble, I’m betting heavily that this new technology will explode within the next 2-3 years as flat panel, high resolution, low power consuming displays start to appear everywhere.
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