It’s reported that the OLED lighting market will reach almost US$4.5 billion by 2013 and grow to $5.9 billion by 2015. It’s disclosed that in the past year the prospects for OLED lighting have made great leaps forward due to improvements in OLED performance and manufacturing.

According to the OLED lighting report analyzes and forecasts the rapidly emerging market and answers important questions on which segments of the lighting market will see the first penetration of OLED lighting. Flat-panel OLED lighting is likely to emulate FPDs by starting out with products of modest capabilities, and then evolving over time to capture more demanding applications. However, this consensus is not universal.

It’s expected that the OLED backlighting market will reach $1.1 billion by 2015. And while the first OLED lighting panels are quite small, the recent scaling up of factories in Asia to build large OLED displays will certainly benefit the manufacturing infrastructure for OLED lighting and lead to larger panels within a few years. Although OLEDs have an efficiency edge over OLEDs today, that edge may narrow or even disappear. Moreover, point sources of light like OLEDs are not especially effective at delivering area light and typically require additional optics to do the job. OLEDs, in contrast, already have exactly the kind of broad area light that’s needed for backlighting.

The flat and flexible format presented by OLEDs creates an opportunity to design high-value added lighting fixtures with an appeal to upscale consumers and especially architects. During 2008, lighting designer Ingo Maurer introduced the world's first OLED "function table light" and researchers at GE are targeting lighted curtains and lighted wallpaper.

The unit costs of OLED lights are likely to remain higher than older general lighting technologies but the extra costs will be offset by improved OLED lifetimes and efficiencies. During 2008, OLED lifetimes improved from 24 Khrs to 100 Khrs. Meanwhile, the US Department of Energy now expects OLED lighting to reach 150 lm/W efficiency in 2012 rather than 2014 as previously forecast.

Manufacturing processes for OLEDs have also progressed significantly. GE and the Fraunhofer Institute have both demonstrated roll-to-roll manufacturing of OLED lighting which will ultimately lead to significant cost improvements in OLED fabrication. Low cost printing approaches and new small molecule inks will also help propel OLEDs into the backlighting market.