December 2006

Art.Lebedev gives an update on the Optimus OLED keyboard -

We have asked 20 OLED makers to give us the price for the displays of the size we need. Only five of them answered - probably because our specs require tooling and most factories are afraid of anything new. We've chosen one manufacturer who will start producing OLEDs in January 2007. Production cycle takes 8-10 weeks. Our specs: 32x32 pixels, 9x9 mm active area, 65K colors.

Read more here (Art.Lebedev blog)

Toshiba's President Nishida cited the active matrix organic EL (electroluminescence) display as a potential successor to the SED. That is why Toshiba invests in the polycrystalline Si (p-Si) TFT line (at Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd.), he added. However, "The technology has only become applicable to a 3- or 4-inch display and it is impossible to create a 40-inch organic EL display in 2 to 3 years. It is even difficult to achieve it in 2015 to 2016. We will pursue the SED until then, but management requires to consider about 10, 20 years ahead," Nishida said.

Read more here 

DisplaySearch has released its Quarterly Small/Medium Shipment and Forecast Report, a comprehensive examination of the small/medium display industry.

AMLCDs dominate shipment share by technology with a-Si at 50.0% and p-Si at 29.7%. STN had a total share of 16.4%, which has been falling over the last two years. HTPS and LCOS are competing in electronic viewfinder market, where results were mixed. OLED displays are still in their infancy with PMOLEDs having a 2.1% share and growing, while AMOLED are not expected to ship in volume until Q1'07.

A location-based services trial that will see a famous Tokyo neighborhood blanketed with about 10,000 RFID tags and other beacons got its start earlier this month.  The Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project seeks to install RFID, infrared and wireless transmitters throughout Tokyo's Ginza area, which is the most famous shopping area in the capital. The tags and transmitters will provide location-related information to people carrying prototype readers developed for the trial, said Ken Sakamura, a professor at the University of Tokyo and the leader of the project.

The terminal being used in the Ginza trial has been developed by Tokyo's Ubiquitous Computing Technology Center. It features a 3.5-in. OLED (organic light-emitting diode) touch-panel display and a host of networking interfaces. There is RFID, infrared and 429-MHz wireless for interacting with the beacons in the trial, a wireless LAN for connection to the Internet and a Bluetooth link.

CDT has announced that it will acquire Next-Sierra, for 1.6M$ in stock.

Next Sierra is a Mountain View, California-based hardware developer that specializes in designing light-emitting diode display driver chips.

Nippon Steel Chemical and Universal Display Corporation today announced significant enhancement in the performance of green phosphorescent OLEDs resulting from their ongoing technical collaboration.

By combining Universal Display's green phosphorescent emitter, UDC-GD48, with NSCC's new green host material, the two companies have achieved record operational lifetime for a green phosphorescent OLED device. This green OLED offers 60,000 hours of operational lifetime at an initial luminance of 1,000 candelas per square meter (cd/m(2)). The device also exhibits a high luminous efficiency of 65 candela per ampere (cd/A) and an external quantum efficiency of 18%, at 1,000 cd/m(2), both characteristic features and benefits of phosphorescent OLED technology. The color coordinates for this device in a standard bottom-emission structure are C.I.E. (0.35, 0.61).

OLED panel maker Univision Technology has had its equipment seized by court order after it failed to settle overdue payments with suppliers, and the company has asked its employees to take leave while operations remain idle, according to the Chinese-language Commercial Times. The company, which has been unable to secure bank loans, will detail its future plans to its 600 employees, some of whom are expected to be laid off, the paper added.

Read more here (Digitimes)

Leadis Technology today announced production volume shipments of the LDS522, a 65K color OLED driver IC with integrated controller supporting 128 (RGB) x 68, 128 (RGB) x 36, and 96 (RGB) x 68 display resolutions. Engineered for mobile phone sub-displays and MP3 players, the device has achieved an initial design-win in the secondary display of a handset for a top-tier supplier.

The LDS522 offers multiple methods for display optimization, including gamma correction, luminance control, temperature variation compensation, and an EEPROM-based adjustment to address panel-to-panel process variation. The product provides a 65K color upgrade to the area-color capable LDS518 and a resolution upgrade to the LDS514 and LDS516, two of Leadis' other 65K color OLED offerings. Integrating 139k bits of full frame memory, an on-chip oscillator, and a DC/DC converter, the LDS522 is a highly-integrated SoC designed to provide vivid and accurate color images across a variety of operating conditions.

In addition, the LDS522 includes programmable display features such as area scrolling, partial display, and color depth selection for enhanced screen performance.

Organic electronics is rapidly making its way out of the lab and into real world applications, according to NanoMarkets. The firm is set to release a new report that finds the market for products such as OLEDs, organic thin-film transistors and other electronic products made from organic materials will grow from $1.4 billion in 2007 to $19.7 billion by 2012 and then go on to reach $34.4 billion in revenues by 2014.

From the report: OLED displays are no longer just for low-end MP3 players and cell phone sub-displays, they are becoming part of the latest mobile electronics concepts including LG’s ebook laptop and Sony-Ericsson’s ultra-slim cell phone.

Speaking at yesterday's annual Samsung Mobile Summit in New York, Muzibul Khan, vice president of product management and engineering at Samsung Telecommunications America said that handsets must move to more-efficient power amplifiers, OLED-based displays and next-generation power sources such as fuel cells or advanced polymers.

He said Samsung is exploring all these options and predicted that it will likely have fuel cells in its handsets by the end of 2007.