Japanese Pioneer is establishing a joint venture with Konica Minolta for Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) lighting business, and sells its CATV-Related equipment business to Technicolor.

Pioneer's Board of Directors decided to enter into a share purchase agreement with Technicolor Delivery Technologies S.A.S., a subsidiary of the Frrench Technicolor S.A., with respect to the transfer of Pioneer's business relating to the development, manufacture and sale/marketing of cable TV system-related equipment to Technicolor.

The move is part of Pioneer's efforts to focus the company's resources to its Car Electronics business.

Pioneer's CATV-Related Equipment Business was established in 1973 and has introduced market-first products such as interactive cable TV systems and digital cable TV systems.

Pioneer also announced an agreement to establish a joint venture with Konica Minolta for Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) lighting business.

"This strategic alliance will combine 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," Pioneer said.

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

The new company's business will be centered on the new field of automotive lighting, in addition to the lighting for indicators and for advertisement Konica Minolta promoted and special lighting applications for beauty market and for medical market Pioneer promoted.

The jointly invested company will aim to achieve revenue of 25 billion yen on mid- to long-term basis.

Konica Minolta utilized its core technologiesin the first commercialization of OLED lighting panels using all phosphores cent 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 thinnest OLED lighting panel, and the white OLED lighting panel the world's highest luminous efficiency.

Pioneer started mass production and shipment of OLED displays for the first time in 1997. With the development and market launching of OLED displays for automobiles in 2004, 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.