"Would even Apple launch an ultra-premium product during the downturn?"

yes, plenty of Apple buyers still got the green to blow on flashy stuff

don't think it's the law that Apple can only launch iphone stuff at ADC either

something to be said for a premium brand to lead the market with something like OLED

Dell and others then have to catch up with their Air-a-likes ...

Of course! For heavens' sake, it's not rocket science: the rich are the only people likely to come out of this mess OK. As usual, it will be the working- and middle-classes that suffer. IIRC, Porche did very well over the past 12 months. If I were running any manufacturing business right now, I should be frantically trying to move my product range up-market.

I've just order a MacBook Pro - me spending money on any product inevitable results in either the company going spectacularly broke or upgrading the whole range.

If anyone would like Aston Martin to release a new range of cars, please get in contact with me and bring £100,000 in used non-sequential notes.

Isn't OLED _way_ cheaper than LCD? I mean why else is it used so frequently in cheap devices?

If the fact that it'll look good but be hideously expensive is a reason to doubt the existance of an Apple product then that Apple Store down the road here must be a figment of my imagination.....

...other thatn this being an Apple pruduct.

Just because Sony sell a 11" TV for thousands does not mean anything, it was new and unique so therefore they priced it high.

When I first read about OLED (around 1997) the main issue was that they had a very short life span (just a year or two), however the manufacturers at that time were saying that converting a TFT production plant to OLED was quite easy and relatively cheap as the methods for production were so similar.

On a side not; on my desk I have a couple of cheap Chinese produced devices (that retail under £200) with 3.5cm OLED displays on them. They look great, have excellent contrast ratio (unlike TFT) and can be viewed at any angle.

If OLED is being used in devices like these, there is no reason they shouldn't be seen in more expensive bits of kit.

"...Tiwari also warned that they will “cost 2.1 times the price of an LCD”"

And what happened to the talk that OLED was going to be cheaper to produce than LCD? At 2.1 times the cost of LCD the LCD manufacturers are hardly going to be pooing their pants at the prospect of Sony/LG wiping the floor with this new technology. It'll be selling like Unicorn horns.

Paris - 'cos she's a rare bit of expensive stuff also