JOLED, a government-backed developer of organic light-emitting diode panels, has been officially estabslished this momth and plans to start mass production in Japan as early as 2017. JOLED was first announced last summer by Sony, Panasonic and Japan Display. But its largest shareholder is Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, a public-private investment fund that played the key role in creating Japan Display.

JOLED Inc. integrates Sony and Panasonic’s R&D functions for organic light- emitting diode (OLED) display panels. Sony has been an expert in semiconductor technology and Panasonic has been succesfully applying organic materials on glass.

Through this collaboration, the companies aim to accelerate the development and early commercialization of OLED display panels.

The joint venture is expected to spend 70-80 billion yen ($587 million to $671 million) by 2016 to develop 4K OLED panels for laptop computers in 20-inch and 12-inch sizes.

This coming June, JOLED will decide where to set up a test production line, which will go online in the fall. Production will begin in late 2017 or 2018.

JOLED will initially focus on panels for laptops, a field where the Japanese company will face no major competitors since both LG and Samsung make large panels for TVs and small panels for smartphones, respectively.