After Decade of Development, Cymer Moves Into OLED Display Manufacturing
different approach to the OLED industry. Instead of supplying its lasers to a toolmaker like Canon or ASML, Knowles says TCZ plans to make the OLED manufacturing tools itself in Asia. He estimates that TCZ will sell the tools at a range of $7 million to $12 million per system. The market research firm DisplaySearch estimates the global market for OLED display technology will soar from over $1 billion this year to more than $6 billion in 2016.
Projected market for OLEDs
The technology can be used to make display screens across the entire range of electronic devices, from mobile phones, GPS navigation devices, and digital camera display screens to netbooks, notebooks, DVD players, and beyond. As Knowles puts it, “The piece we like about OLED is that it runs the gamut, from cell phones to TVs.”
Cymer has not identified its Korean customer, but it’s likely that TCZ has been working closely with Samsung Mobile Display, which is the world’s largest OLED manufacturer and has unveiled OLED displays for cell phones, TVs, and laptops in recent years. If all goes as planned, Knowles says consumers could see the first OLED displays made with TCZ tools in time for Christmas.
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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