Konica Minolta and Pioneer Establishes Joint Venture Company for OLED Lighting Business

Tokyo (June 1, 2017) - Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) and Pioneer Corporation (Pioneer) announced that Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED, Inc. (Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED), the joint venture for Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) lighting business, was established on June 1, 2017.

The new company will take charge of business and product planning, product development, production technology development and marketing functions of both companies' OLED lighting business to drive its initiatives.

Joint Venture Company Overview

Company name

Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED, Inc.

Headquarters

Hamamatsucho Building, 1-1-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo Japan

Capitals

490 million yen

(Investment ratio: Konica Minolta 50%, Pioneer 50%)

Representative

Masahiro Nakakita, President

Number of employees

Approximately 50

Date of establishment

June 1, 2017

Commencement of operation

July 1, 2017

Business domain

Development and sales of OLED lighting panels

URL

www.kompo.jp/en/

Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED will generate synergies through combined strengths of Konica Minolta's roll-to-roll method flexible panel manufacturing equipment and production technology and Pioneer's achievement in OLED panel mass production and market rollout and its car electronics OEM business know-how.

With the establishment of the new company, Konica Minolta and Pioneer will accelerate business launch for OLED lighting not only in the existing fields of indicators, advertisement, beauty and medical lighting but also in the new field of automotive lighting, with enhanced values for customers.

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Backgrounder Achievement of OLED Lighting Business at Konica Minolta and Pioneer

Konica Minolta utilized its core technologies in the world's first commercialization of OLED lighting panels using all phosphorescent emitters in 2011. The company also announced in 2014 the paper-thin, light-weight and flexible plastic substrate OLED lighting panel with the world's first color tunable function, the world's thinnest OLED lighting panel, and the white OLED lighting panel the world's highest luminous efficacy. These technical advancements have drawn close attention to Konica Minolta as a front-runner in the industry.

Pioneer started mass production and shipment of OLED displays for the first time in the world in 1997. With the development and market launching of OLED displays for car electronics products, the company has sold more than 140 million OLED displays in total and accumulated wealth of OLED-related technologies. In 2012 Pioneer started shipment of world's first OLED lighting modules with adjustable color and brightness, followed by, in 2014, the world's first mass production and shipment of the OLED lighting module with a wet coating process for a light- emitting layer that permits significantly lower manufacturing cost. Owning high-level mass production technologies and facilities for OLED lighting panels, Pioneer has been widely introducing applications such as lighting for beauty and medical fields.

Pioneer Corporation published this content on 01 June 2017 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein.
Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 01 June 2017 04:19:25 UTC.

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