Hitachi Ltd. and Canon Inc. have agreed to jointly develop and manufacture small and midsize OLED displays for digital cameras within two years.

The two firms will transfer a total of about 100 engineers to a new organization they plan to set up in early July to handle the project.

They also intend to build a new production line at an existing plant in Chiba Prefecture to turn out organic EL displays on a trial basis. Based on the results, the two partners expect to build a system to mass-produce the EL displays at relatively low cost, taking advantage of Canon's materials coating technology and production control know-how.

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