Sony Corporation today announced that it plans to invest approximately 22 billion yen to strengthen middle and large size OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panel production technology. With this investment, Sony intends to accelerate the shift to middle and large size, high image quality OLED panels.

Sony began researching OLED technology in 1994, and has since positioned OLED as a future next-generation display technology. In December 2007, Sony launched the world’s first OLED TV, “XEL-1″ in Japan, incorporating Sony’s proprietary “Organic Panel” to realize extreme thinness and superb image quality through a high contrast ratio, high peak brightness, accurate color reproduction and rapid response time.

In order to advance the shift towards middle and large size, high image quality OLED panels, Sony has decided to invest from the second half of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 towards the further development of production technologies. Sony will reinforce its TFT (thin film transistor) and EL (electroluminescent) layer coating processing facilities at Sony Mobile Display Corporation’s Higashiura factory, and plans to implement this production technology during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010.