Konica Minolta and Pioneer have announced that the companies have entered into an agreement to establish a joint venture for OLED lighting business to accelerate the commercialisation OLED lighting through the integration of their respective strengths in OLED technologies
The joint venture will combine Konica Minolta's roll-to-roll method flexible panel manufacturing equipment and production technology and Pioneer's achievement in OLED panel mass production and market roll-out and its car electronics OEM business know-how.
In entering into the agreement the companies the new company's business focus will be on the emerging field of automotive lighting and lighting for indicators, along with OLED lighting specific applications currently being pursued by Konica Minolta and Pioneer - namely advertisement and special lighting applications for the beauty market and the medical market resepctively.
The new company to be established will integrate business and product planning, product development, production technology development and marketing functions of both companies’ OLED lighting business to drive its initiatives.
By building up a firm position in the flexible OLED lighting, the jointly invested company sets its aim to achieve revenue of 25 billion yen on mid- to long-term basis.
As there has been increasing demand for design sophistication, one of most important value-added features, in the automotive component market, high-end luxury cars have started adopting OLED lighting for tail lamps. Going forward, not only for better design but also for improvement in the overall energy efficiency of cars, even smaller and lighter automotive components will be required. In addition, as tail lamps are quite relevant to safety, the manufacturers must own high-level quality control technologies. OLED has also been more and more in demand for new applications that have never existed before, such as advertisement lighting which integrates lighting with paper or package and beauty lighting utilizing high-level color rendering properties of OLED.
Joint Venture Company Overview
| Company name | Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED, Inc. |
| Planned date of establishment | May 2017 |
| Headquarters | Hamamatsucho Building, 1-1-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo Japan |
| Capitals | 490 million yen |
| Investment ratio | Konica Minolta 50%, Pioneer 50% |
| Business domain | Development and sales of OLED lighting panels |
Achievement of OLED Lighting Business at Konica Minolta and Pioneer
Konica Minolta utilised its core technologies in the world's first commercialisation of OLED lighting panels using all phosphorescent emitters in 2011. The company also announced in 2014 the paper-thin, light-weight and flexible plastic substrate OLED lighting panel with the world's first colour tune-able function, the world’s thinnest OLED lighting panel, and the white OLED lighting panel the world’s highest luminous efficacy. These technical advancements have drawn close attention to Konica Minolta as a front-runner in the industry.
Pioneer started mass production and shipment of OLED displays for the first time in the world in 1997. With the development and market launching of OLED displays for automobiles in 2004, the company has sold more than 140 million OLED displays in total and accumulated wealth of OLED-related technologies.
In 2012 Pioneer started shipment of world’s first OLED lighting modules with adjustable colour and brightness, followed by, in 2014, the world’s first mass production and shipment of the OLED lighting module with a wet coating process for a light-emitting layer that permits significantly lower manufacturing cost. Owning mass production technologies and facilities for OLED lighting panels, Pioneer has been widely introducing applications such as lighting for beauty and medical fields as well as proposing lighting for automobiles.
Source: Konica Minolta and Pioneer