Pioneer 2010 Annual Report Download - page 13

Entry into the OLED Lighting Business
Through a capital and business alliance with Mitsubishi Chemical
Corporation, Pioneer will enter the OLED lighting business. Since
becoming the world’s first company to successfully mass-pro-
duce OLED displays, Pioneer has amassed over ten years of
experience in OLED mass production technologies.
In 2012, European countries will cease manufacturing
incandescent light bulbs, which have low energy efficiency.
In addition to LEDs, OLED lighting is now under the spotlight
as an environmentally conscious next-generation light source,
because it contains no mercury and illuminates in an energy-
saving and efficient manner. OLED lighting is characterized
primarily by its thinness and flexibility. It provides light that is
gentle on the eyes because the illumination is generated
from entirely planar light sources.
Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation will be supplied with
OLED lighting panels from Pioneer, and aims to commence
OLED lighting sales in 2011. Looking ahead, Pioneer and
Mitsubishi Chemical will jointly develop mass production
technologies for OLED panels using printable base materials
and new printable materials for the light-emission layer,
which can be mass produced at a lower cost compared with
the current vapor deposition process.
New Business Development Driven by the
World’s First HVT Speakers
Pioneer was first in the world to successfully develop and
commercialize speakers employing HVT technology. These
speakers challenge the conventional wisdom that speakers
require depth to produce bass sound. This new technology
converts the horizontal movement of the voice coil into vertical
movement, thereby achieving a speaker that is both slimmer
and lighter, with rich bass sound. These speakers also provide
enhanced design features, enabling installation in areas where
speaker installation was previously difficult. In January 2010,
the technology was put on the market as a Pioneer car audio
speaker model, and has proven popular in the marketplace.
Leveraging these features, Pioneer plans to use these speak-
ers to develop a broad range of products, including built-in
home audio systems and home theater systems.
In the Others segment, Pioneer seeks to develop
new businesses and generate earnings from them
as early as possible, making a third core business
that will support Pioneer’s future, by taking full
advantage of its extensive R&D achievements
over the years. These businesses include OLED
lighting, which has been attracting attention as a
future source of lighting in recent years, and slim
speakers for which the world’s first HVT
(Horizontal-Vertical Transforming) technology
has been developed and commercialized.
The car audio speaker TS-STH1000 features the world’s first HVT technology, provid-
ing outstanding sound quality and design, and a broad range of installment options.
Pioneer provided OLED panels for
OLED lighting prototypes at an
exhibit by Verbatim Corporation, an
affiliated company of Mitsubishi
Chemical Corporation, at “Light +
Building 2010,” the world’s largest
international lighting trade fair held
in Frankfurt, Germany in April
2010. (Designed in collaboration
with Uchihara Creative Lighting
Design Inc.)
Growth Strategies for Others Segment
Feature: Growth Strategy
PIONEER CORPORATION Annual Report 2010
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