May 2007

Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed; however, as is customary with these agreements, Universal Display will recognize commercial chemical sales and license fee revenues from its supply of materials to LG.Philips LCD.  The term of the agreement runs through June 30, 2008.

LG.Philips LCD has long been a leader in LCD display products, and we are excited to be part of their plans for the production of AMOLED display products for the commercial market, said Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Display. This new agreement with LG.Philips LCD illustrates the acceptance of our phosphorescent OLED technology and materials by the display industry for thinner, energy-efficient commercial OLED displays.

LG.Philips LCD is currently focused on introducing small and medium-sized OLED panel applications. The relationship between LG.Philips LCD and Universal Display most recently yielded the world’s first high-resolution AMOLED display built on flexible metal foil utilizing Universal Display’s proprietary high-efficiency PHOLED and FOLED® flexible technologies.

LG Electronics said on Tuesday that it plans to roll out mobile phones with AM OLED panels through SK Telecom for the first time in Korea in the second half of this year.

"LG Electronics decided to adopt AM OLED panels, developed jointly with LG.Philips LCD, for mobile phones. This decision will be the first time that AM OLEDs will be used in mobile phones," the company said.

This is actually not true, since KDDI already has a phone with AMOLED display

Majoto Tojiki shows a beautiful EL (Electroluminescence) lamp that shows PI. Unlike some internet reports suggest, this is not an OLED device...

MagnaChip launched a new AMOLED display solution supporting WQVGA, 240x432 resolution and 262K colors, is expected to be ready for mass production this month. This product was designed to meet the specific requirements of display panels for mobile TV phones and multimedia phones. Embedded with EEPROM, it controls RGB gamma, oscillator frequency and internal power. The MDDI interface of Qualcomm allows for high speed data transmission.

This solution also offers longer battery life time, due to a special feature that adjusts screen brightness automatically. Further, the solution offers an RGB-separated gamma adjustment, which provides superior, stable color display, and as a result, more natural still images and video images.

Canon and Toshiba have been developing their SED technology since 1999 and the launch had originally been delayed until July 2007. That date has now slipped to the end of 2007.

Canon blamed part of the delay on the falling price of flat-panel TVs and said it needed to improve the efficiency of its mass production facilities.

Now mainly relegated to handset displays, OLED TV shipments will rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 170.6% to reach 1.2 million units in 2012, up from 8,000 in 2007. Sales revenue for OLED TVs will increase to US$691 million in 2012, rising from less than US$1 million in 2007, iSuppli forecasts.

Moreover, the resolutions needed in the TV market are attainable with OLEDs. OLED TVs in larger sizes, i.e. greater than 20-inches, could be sold by the 2012 timeframe. Most likely, these TVs will use polymer panels made by inkjet printing in the largest sizes, but small-molecule OLEDs made by evaporation techniques also could be used in TVs.

The plethora of technologies also may make it hard for OLED TV to attract the attention of end-product OEMs and channel vendors. Because of this, OLED will be limited to less than half of 1% of the 242.7 million unit worldwide TV market in 2011, according to iSuppli.

Read more here (Digitimes) 

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) today announced that in collaboration with Thorn Lighting and the University of Durham, the Company has been awarded a GBP1.6 million grant by the UK Department of Trade and Industry-led Technology Programme. The grant will part fund a three year project to develop solution processable organic materials and device architectures suitable for large area white lighting applications. The total project cost is GBP3.3 million.

Under terms of the grant, CDT, through its Sumation joint venture, will provide materials, device architecture and testing, modeling, and technical input. The project is aimed at developing materials and devices for solid-state, high efficiency lighting applications based on CDT's patented PLED technology. Light emitting polymer materials can be solution processed and offers the potential of low cost manufacturing for large lighting panels. Successful completion of this project will offer novel lighting products with environmental benefits.

At SID 2007, Sony showed a new flexible OLED display, on a plastic substrate. The prototype is capable of showing 16.7Million colors, is 2.5" large and shows 120x169 pixels (80ppi). It weights 1.5 grams (without the driver).

According to Sony, this new technology will lead to the development of thinner, lighter and softer electronics.

The license, which is royalty bearing to Kodak, enables CMEL to use Kodak technology for active matrix OLED modules in a variety of small to medium size display applications such as mobile phones, digital cameras and portable media players. The agreement also enables CMEL to purchase Kodak's patented OLED materials for use in manufacturing displays. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Samsung has stated that it does not believe Sony will be able to deliver on its promise to begin consumer sales of OLED screens this year. The Japanese brand has caused rivals to accelerate their plans for OLED screen development, after pledging that it will begin sales of eleven-inch OLED TV monitors before the end of the year. Organic Light Emitting Diode technology allows high resolution displays to be created from wafer-thin panels. As OLED screens are self-illuminating there is no need for an LCD-style backlight.

Yoo Eui-jin, vice president and chief of Samsung SDI’s OLED team, said I hope Sony will really do it, but considering circumstances, I doubt they will be able to start selling it this year. Maybe it would be possible for them to make a hundred or a thousand units as artifacts, but no more than that.