Sony investigates fireflies' bottoms

On a trawl of the Nikkei this morning, I noticed a cunningly buried item reporting a research tie-up between Sony and Idemitsu. The little venture, it said, would be spending the next five years looking into ways of making organic electroluminescent (OEL) panels.

Now, this sounded a touch odd because Sony does't usually get into this sort of wet-work and most people living in Japan think of Idemitsu as a sprawling chain of petrol stations. It turns out this was a bit narrow-minded of us. Apparently, the company also has a rather advanced materials business tucked away behind the shelves of engine lube and windscreen cleaner.

A quick call to the gruff-voiced Sony expert, and all became clear-ish.The two companies are getting together to develop a completely new type of ultra-thin flat screen that generates its own backlighting via the organic ability of the material itself to exude luminescence. Cut the babble, said I, you mean it's a TV that uses the same "technology" that makes fireflies' bottoms light up.

There was a pause on the phone before he grudgingly agreed that this was a closely guarded corporate secret, but nevertheless roughly correct.

The whole thing is in very early stages of development, but the chap on the other end of the blower was genuinely optimistic that this could become the next big breakthrough in flat screens. You could almost hear the drooling as he explained that plasma and LCD would become power-hungry things of the past as OELs marched into our lives.

Read between the lines and Sony, by making this project a "high priority" is tacitly admitting that it has made a bit of a balls-up on the old flat-screen game. It has more or less ditched plasma, and come to the LCD party with none of the panache of Sharp or Samsung. Looking into the next generation of materials could be the wisest option for a company in dangerous need of a killer application for living rooms around the world.