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TOKYO -- The Japanese government said it is working with Sony Corp., Sharp Corp. and other electronics manufacturers to jointly develop a promising next-generation television technology, the latest effort to retain the competitiveness of Japan's electronics makers in an increasingly cutthroat industry.

The companies will develop large organic light-emitting-diode panels, or OLED, which use chemicals that can emit light, eliminating the need for the backlight used in conventional liquid-crystal-display sets. That means TV sets using this technology can be thinner and show crisper images with less energy.

OLED currently is used mostly in small displays for mobile phones, digital cameras and handheld TVs, but electronics manufacturers are racing to develop large OLED displays that can be mass-produced at a reasonable cost.

Although it is new technology, Texas market researcher DisplaySearch expects OLED displays to become a $5.3 billion market by 2015 from $497.4 million in 2007. Sony became the world's first manufacturer to start selling an OLED TV set last year, but it is small, at 11 inches, and is priced at about $2,500. The set, made in small quantities and sold in Japan and the U.S., remains the only OLED TV on the market.

Industry executives believe OLED TVs one day will become as affordable as LCD sets are now, but given that no company has yet figured out a way to mass-produce large OLED sets, they acknowledge that such a future is far off. Existing LCD and plasma TVs have just recently become affordable for average consumers, even though they have been in the market for years.

By initiating a joint research effort by 11 Japanese companies, including materials and parts suppliers, the government is hoping to speed up development and to give Japanese electronics companies an edge. In addition to Sony and Sharp, a joint venture between Toshiba Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. is participating.

Japanese companies have long been global leaders in the electronics industry, but they are struggling to compete against aggressive rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., both of South Korea.

The Japanese government's involvement in industry isn't new. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, under which the joint effort is being conducted, has been looking for ways to retain influence even as Japanese industries continue to be deregulated.

The ministry played a crucial role in guiding Japan's auto and electronics companies in the decades after World War II, as they turned into global leaders. But in recent years, it has lost its traditional role as a planner of industrial and trade policies and is now active in areas such as environment-friendly technologies and consumer protection.

The effectiveness of past efforts has been questionable. About five years ago, the government created a joint-development company called Future Vision to develop large, low-cost LCD TVs at a time when manufacturers were struggling with the issue, but the company produced few results. An impediment was the reluctance of manufacturers to share core technology that would allow them to differentiate themselves from rivals.

For the current project, the government says it plans to commit 3.5 billion yen ($32.8 million) over five years, a sum that people in the industry say is too small to make a difference, given the billions of dollars that OLED development would require.

The project aims to make it possible to mass-produce 40-inch or bigger TV sets by the second half of 2010.