Industry analyst firm NanoMarkets has just published its latest forecasts of the OLED lighting market predicting a US $1.4 billion market opportunity in 2019. The report, " OLED Lighting Markets-2014 "  notes that while the sector has foundered for the past few years it now appears to be worthy of some renewed optimism based  on both improvements in OLED lighting panel performance and recent expansion of manufacturing facilities.

Highlights:

OLEDs aren't just for luxury lighting any more. The efficacy and luminance of OLED lighting panels are reaching levels where OLED lighting firms can claim that their products are truly energy efficient and have the brightness that make them a practical form of lighting for offices and homes. For example, LG Chem says that next year it will have 135 lm/W panels with 5,000 cd/m2 luminance.

Until recently, most of the output of the OLED lighting business was development kits for designers. However, in the next few years, revenues from kits will be rapidly overtaken by revenues from OLED luminaires, with revenues from OLED luminaires for homes reaching almost US $400 million in sales by 2019 and revenues from OLED office luminaires reaching almost US $380 million in the same year.

OLED capacity continues to grow. In the past three years, Osram and Philips have invested US $25 million and US $57 million respectively in setting up OLED production lines. Meanwhile, Konica Minolta is currently constructing an OLED mass production facility at an approximate investment of around US $100 million.

By next year, worldwide capacity for OLED lighting panels is expected to be around 30 million panels. This number is expected to grow to almost 40 million by 2019. NanoMarkets believes that in the next five years there will be a major influx of low-cost (and possibly government subsidized) Chinese suppliers that will force down OLED lighting prices in a manner similar to what the solar panel industry has experienced.