Glen Allen, VA -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/21/2011 -- Industry analyst firm NanoMarkets announces the release of its latest market report on OLED materials titled, “Markets for OLED Encapsulation – 2011.” In the report NanoMarkets sees big opportunities for makers of OLED encapsulation products as OLED lighting achieves market volumes starting in 2015. As a result NanoMarkets estimates that OLED encapsulation technologies generate revenues nearing one billion ($US) before the end of the decade.

Growth in encapsulation is consistent with NanoMarkets other OLED materials forecasts, which predict substantial overall growth in several important OLED sub-sectors. First, small, rigid OLED displays are now widely commercially available and expected to continue to expand, principally in smartphone and other mobile computing displays. Second, the OLED TV market is finally poised to take off within the next few years, as display manufacturers launch newer, bigger models with better value propositions for customers. And most importantly, the emerging OLED lighting industry is on an upward trajectory that will significantly increase the size of the addressable market for OLED materials suppliers.

What does all this mean for encapsulation? Glass encapsulation technologies heavily dominate the market today, and glass will continue to dominate in the near- to mid-term. However, the consensus is that glass will not be sufficient for all of the OLEDs expected to emerge over the next decade. OLED panels are getting larger, and the emerging lighting and TV markets expect OLED panels to last much longer than the mobile phone and mp3 sub-displays of the past. Furthermore, the cost pressures are getting more serious. The days in which manufacturers were willing to pay high premiums for good encapsulation strategies are long gone, and low-cost options for encapsulation are now demanded.

For these reasons, OLED firms are beginning to recognize that high quality encapsulation is an area of strategic importance. NanoMarkets believes that we are now seeing some real opportunities for the firms that have been working on the encapsulation issue, many of whom have poured resources into this area for several years. In fact, encapsulation is the key enabling technology for the larger-format/longer lifetime OLEDs that will be entering the market in the near- to mid-term, and thus can unlock entire market segments.

What about flexible encapsulation? The opportunity space for encapsulation technology suppliers will improve when conformable and flexible OLEDs finally start to emerge. Flexibility has been a huge challenge for the encapsulation business, but could potentially generate a lot of revenue for those firms that can bring suitable encapsulation solutions to market. And NanoMarkets believes that conformable OLEDs, which are closer to market than truly flexible ones, present an even bigger opportunity for encapsulation firms.

About the report:
In this new report, NanoMarkets, analyzes and quantifies the opportunities for encapsulation suppliers in the fast-growing OLED market. We examine the product development and marketing strategies of the major players in the OLED encapsulation materials sector, from large multinationals like 3M, DuPont and Corning to specialty firms like Tera Barrier Films, and we also attempt to indicate which are the “companies to watch” and which will be the likely winners and losers in the encapsulation materials space. Finally, this report contains detailed, eight-year forecasts of the OLED encapsulation market broken out by product type and by OLED application.

About NanoMarkets
NanoMarkets tracks and analyzes emerging market opportunities in energy, electronics and other markets created by developments in advanced materials. The firm is a recognized leader in industry analysis and forecasts for the OLED materials business and has been covering these markets for more than four years.