LG invests $655 million to ramp up OLED production

We saw LG's newest OLED HDTV televisions at CES last month, and we were certainly impressed. However, the price tag wasn't really in our range, and limited availability severely diminished the chances of even owning one in the first place, but LG Display has announced they're investing $655 million to put the new televisions in mass production next year.

The company will implement a new 8th-generation OLED manufacturing line in South Korea that LG plans to start up in the first half of 2014, building 26,000 input sheets every month using LG's WRGB OLED evaporation process. These sheets will be big enough to manufacturer 55-inch televisions.

It looks like LG Display is ramping up its efforts in order to compete with Samsung, which also recently launched a 55-inch OLED television set at CES last month, as well as curved displays alongside LG, with both companies referring to them as "the world's first" curved OLED set, even though they debuted at the same time.

OLED televisions are said to have more vivid colors with deeper blacks and whiter whites, compared to existing liquid crystal display units. The new technology also allows manufacturers to make really thin TVs, and it may eventually make its way into laptops, where the OLED technology could save on battery life. LG's investment will begin sometime during this first quarter.