Sony Pulling OLED TVs From Market

Tweet

Tech giant Sony has pulled their Sony OLED televisions from its home market of Japan, citing sluggish demand. This is a big defeat for Sony, who had placed high hopes on the OLED TVs, although they’ll still continue selling the OLED TVs in North America and Europe for the time being.

Per a report from news service Reuters, Sony was hoping that their new OLED TVs would popularize the technology and bring Sony back to the forefront as the #1 tech-gadget company in the world (think 1980′s and the popularity of the Walkman). Sony’s then president Ryoji Chubachi said in 2007 with the release of the first OLED TV set, “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.”

However, Sony hit some roadblocks with their OLED TV technology. It’s difficult to create large OLED panels and create them cheaply. Sony only sold one model of OLED TV, a small 11-inch small set that sold for 200,000 yen ($2,215). A steep price to pay for a small HDTV, even though OLED displays look amazing. While Sony hasn’t announced how many of the small OLED TV’s they’ve sold, Japanese marketing analysts at DisplaySearch estimate that only 2,000 have been sold.

Some pundits criticized Sony for being slow to jump to the flat-panel LCD and Plasma market in the early 2000′s. Now, they probably jumped to OLED too soon.

We’re seeing more and more of these amazing OLED displays in mobile phones. We’ll likely see them popularized in TVs, just not today.