Irico group has announced that they will build an OLED production plant. The plan is for a 12 million 2.2" OLED panels per year. The plant is a JV by two companies : IRICO Display Devices and Shenzhen Hongyang Industry & Trade. The work on the new plant has already started.
It's not clear whether these will be PMOLED or AMOLEDs yet...
It seems like Toshiba is going to buy Panasonic's 40% part of their TMDipslay JV. TMDisplay is making small LCDs for mobile devices. They are also working on OLED displays.
Apparantly Panasonic wants to focus on larger plasma and LCD panels.
OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) is a new display technology. OLEDs are made from organic materials that emit light when electricity is applied. OLEDs are used to create thin, efficient and beautiful displays.
OLEDs can be used to create televisions. Like LCD, they can be used to make High-Def TVs (HDTVs). Currently only Samsung has discussed HDTV OLEDs. Samsung's roadmap spells such televisions by 2010.
Samsung 40 HD-AMOLED TV Prototype
In fact Samsung has already shown an HDTV OLED - a 40" prototype, back in October 2008. The resolution is 1,920 by 1,080, and the contrast rate is 1,000,000:1.
There are also rumors that Panasonic is working toegether with Toshiba on OLED TVs. These will be HDTVs, and will be available in 2 years.
HD is not just for TVs. eMagin, already shipping OLED microdisplays for many years, are working on higher-than-HD resolution microDisplays. These little displays make their ways into military equipment, but also might be available for VR goggles in the future.
Today only Sony is selling an OLED TV, the 11" XEL-1. This is actually more of a prototype or demonstration set - it costs 2,500$, and they only make around a thousand a month.
Sony XEL-1
The Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch phone is now available to buy from Amazon - unlocked for 500$.
Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch
The S8300 is a 3G (USDPA/UMTA/EDGE/GPRS/GSM) slider phone with a 8Mp
camera with LED flash, DivX support (and many other formats), video
recording, A-GPS, FM radio and 80MB of internal memory with microSDHC
slot. The display is a 2.8" touch-screen AMOLED.
The S8300 from Amazon.com (500$)
Earlier this month we reported on the new Samsung A877. Now AT&T has officially launched the phone, calling it the Samsung Impression. The A877 has a 3.2" touchscreen AMOLED.
Samsung ImpressionThe phone has a QWERTY slide-keyboard, it's a quadband GSM/EDGE/HSDPA phone, and comes with a 3MP camera, GPS and Full HTML browser.
Samsung says that Full-touch point will be the 'strategic models' in their mobile phone lineup for 2009. They expect that around half of those phones will have AMOLED displays.
Back in February, Mitsubishi stopped making their Laser TV (LaserVue) - those high-end TVs using laser technology, costing around 7,000$.
Now Mitsubishi says that they are back in production. Here's some more info on those TVs.
Samsung says that we shouldn't expect OLED TVs from them any time soon...
"We still have several issues to overcome in terms of cost and production," said a HS Kim, vice president in charge of Flat Panel Development at Samsung when asked when the company would be releasing an OLED television.
Just last month Samsung said that they see OLED TVs in 2009 as a real possibility. Maybe there are several opinions within Samsung, or maybe they are seeing that is it more difficult than they first assumed.
Novaled and Holst Centre have decided to collaborate under a joint development agreement. They will work on using the Holst centre's Organic TFT tech and Novaled's OLED dopants:
Novaled's doping technology contributes to very high power efficiencies and long lifetimes in OLEDs by improving charge carrier injection and transport in the organic layers. Novaled has shown that these effects are also relevant for organic TFT as the carrier injection from drain and source into the organic material has a major influence on the device performance. Novaled currently develops dopant and host materials which can be processed both in vacuum and in solution.
A nice video of the Kodak OLED photo frame from CES 2009, with a lenghty explanation by Kodak's product manager:
