Driving OLEDs to a $1.7 billion market opportunity by 2020

IRELAND: OLED revenue has been driven mainly by display applications (smartphones) but the industry is now targeting the lighting market based on the technology specificities in terms of design (form factor) and efficiency.

On this new battleground, OLED will have to compete with LED technology which has already paved the way with a revolution in Solid State Lighting (SSL) that has drawn attention away from OLED over the last 10 years. Added to that, the high cost of OLED technology will not make mass market penetration easier and current low efficacy could slow adoption.

OLEDs will develop slowly in the lighting market (Automotive and General lighting) and attract mainly niche applications (specialty and high-end lighting), differentiating through design possibilities. To access traditional market segments (commercial lighting, office lighting), OLED technology will have to find a spark, as well as combine enough different niche markets to achieve the economies of scale that will decrease costs. In our estimation, this should be triggered by 2014 with the use of larger substrates and better process control.

We estimate that OLED lighting panels will reach a market size of nearly $2.8 million in 2012 and will peak to nearly $1.7 billion by 2020. Growth will be driven mainly by general Lighting applications, representing more than 70 percent of the overall OLED lighting business in 2020.