January 2006

Leadis Technology, a mixed-signal semiconductor developer of display driver ICs for small panel color displays, today announced results for the fourth quarter of 2005, ended December 31, 2005. Revenues for the fourth quarter were $21.5 million, up 22% from $17.6 million in the third quarter but down 36% from $33.3 million for the same period in 2004.

OLED sales were flat with the prior quarter and declined to 25% of revenue.

Two new products moved into volume production status: The LDS517, a driver for 262K color OLED displays with rich color performance primarily for MP3 players. This product currently serves some of Creative Lab's newest MP3 players.

Having pioneered production of the world’s first full-color, active matrix organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, Eastman Kodak Company today announced that it will broaden its participation in the OLED industry in order to further promote the commercialization of OLED technology.

To facilitate the company’s move, Kodak has granted full control of SK Display Corporation to Sanyo Electric Company. Kodak and Sanyo formed the SK Display joint venture in 2001 to manufacture OLED displays. Kodak will continue as exclusive licensing agent on behalf of Kodak and Sanyo for certain OLED intellectual property.

UDC announced today that it has been awarded a significant patent covering ink-jet printing of phosphorescent OLED displays, US Patent No. 6,982,179, titled "Structure and Method of Fabricating Organic Devices".

"This PHOLED ink-jet printing patent provides another option for OLED manufacturers in choosing how to produce displays using our proprietary phosphorescent OLED technology," said Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Display Corporation. "The patent is a further demonstration of the breadth and depth of Universal Display's PHOLED technology, which is widely recognized as critical for OLED displays - from small, where power efficiency is critical, to large, where power efficiency equates to less heat generation."

Native Instruments (NI) today unveiled Kore, which it says is "the world’s first" Universal Sound Platform that includes both a hardware controller and a new software interface. The company says that Kore will revolutionize how performers and producers work with software instruments and effects. "Following a decade of evolution in music software, KORE opens up significant new possibilities for the operation of software instruments both in the studio and on stage. It also marks the first host system by Native.
The Kore hardware controller also offers a high-resolution, touch-sensitive knobs and 'Organic LED' (OLED) display technology, NI says the controller "turns a computer-based set-up into a powerful tactile instrument, offering bi-directional communication between controller and software for quick context-specific overviews using USB 2.0 interface.

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Universal Display Corporation announced it has been awarded a $69,999 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL), for a program entitled Flexible and Conformal Environmental Barrier Technology for Displays.

During this Phase I program, Universal Display will integrate a novel low-temperature plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process coating technology with its proprietary FOLED®, TOLED® and PHOLED™ technologies. The PECVD process is based on pioneering research at Princeton University, which is believed to enable the deposition of flexible and protective films onto the top surface in an OLED without causing damage to the OLED. The end result will be the demonstration of a flexible OLED display prototype built on a stainless steel substrate. This research is an important element toward the Company’s goal of developing a rugged, long-lived, thin and lightweight flexible OLED display technology for both military and commercial applications.

Samsung SDI reported a year-on-year increase of 142.4 billion won ($143.7 million) in operating profits in the fourth quarter. The gain was due mainly to continued growth in demand for large-size digital TVs, mobile handsets and secondary battery products.

Samsung also said it will double capital expenditures to just over $1 billion in 2006. About 80 percent of the budget will go to a series of scheduled projects to expand PDP and active-matrix organic LED production along with secondary battery development.

The BenQ-Siemens S88 offers an integrated 2.0-megapixel camera with autofocus, 16x digital zoom and LED photolight. This mobile phone is held in a horizontal position like a "real" digital camera when photographs are being taken. Then the built-in photo editor puts the finishing touches to the shots. To put the pictures on paper, they can be simply sent directly from the mobile to a photo printer via PictBridge.
A high-performance video camera is always to hand too with BenQ-Siemens S88. Movie sequences of any length desired can be shot in MPEG4 format. Sufficient storage capacity is guaranteed. To extend the internal memory (16 MB), the mobile has a slot provided for Micro-SD-Cards. The screen is a 2.0-inch Active Matrix OLED display (262,144 colors, 176 x 220 pixels).
The BenQ-Siemens S88 will be on retail sale from the first quarter of 2006.

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This innovative design is the largest character PLED offered in the industry, and features an LCD-compatible interface (Samsung KS0066 and Hitachi HD44780 compatible).
The display offers over 100:1 contrast ratio, and virtually no viewing angle limitations. This rugged design is mechanically equivalent to LCD-standard 20x4 mounting and interface locations. The display is a solid state display resulting in no contrast nor performance variations over temperature.
The display features a highly-uniform vibrant image up to 100 nits. The display offers a low power consumption which is user-controlled proportional to panel intensity. The display is configured for a single power supply, and accessible via 4-bit or 8-bit parallel data interfaces.
Sample price $18.00 and 1k pc Price $16.00 each.

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Sidney Rosenblatt, Chief Financial Officer of Universal Display Corporation, in a presentation titled "Changing the Display Landscape through Phosphorescent OLEDs," will announce the achievement of key technological milestones in the Company's development of blue PHOLED materials and technology. Universal Display's new blue PHOLED system with sky blue color of CIE (0.16, 0.37) now offers luminous efficiency of 20 candelas per ampere (cd/A) and 100,000 hours of operating lifetime at 200 candelas per square meter (cd/m2). This follows the Company's breakthrough announcement in June, 2005 of a sky blue PHOLED with over 15,000 hours at 200 cd/m2. That was the first significant blue PHOLED to break through the 1,000 hour lifetime barrier.

The Company has also made significant progress in the demonstration of deeper blue performance. Mr. Rosenblatt will present a proprietary new blue PHOLED with CIE (0.16, 0.29), excellent luminous efficiency of 21 cd/A and over 17,500 hours of operating lifetime at 200 cd/m2. This corresponds to over 3,000 hours at 500 cd/m2, a target luminance for commercial applications.

AU Optronics and Samsung Electronics have signed a broad patent cross-license agreement to allow expanded access to the patent portfolios each company holds. The agreement is a significant expansion of the companies' relationship to enhance the development and delivery of innovative digital consumer electronics products by sharing each other's respective technologies.

The coverage of the cross license includes patents in the area of TFT-LCD and OLED, especially the technology for LCD TV application. AUO and Samsung expect the agreement to bolster the development and deployment of TFT-LCD technology in the LCD TV, giving a new catalyst to strengthen the competitiveness of the two companies.