Digitimes shows LG Display's OLED roadmap for 2004-2011. As stated before, LG plans to introduce 15" displays in the second half of 2009 - this will only be a 'trial production' - real quantities, and larger 32" OLED TVs will come in 2010.

LG Display OLED roadmap

LG also plans to introduce products based on their flexible OLED technology (developed together with UDC). They have already shown a 4" flexible OLED for military use, back in January 2009 at CES:

UDC Flexible OLED Display Concept

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released their latest annual report on SSL research and development. It says that their targets are being achieved - but not all in the same product...

Their milestones for 2008 were:

• 80 lm/W efficacy


• 25$ per kilolumen


• 50,000h lifetime


• Warm-white color temperature (less than 5000K)

The DOE has also released new chief priorities. One of them is encouraging more investment for OLED Lighting.

According to OLEDNet, Philips are getting ready to release OLED Lighting products by 2010 (which was announced a while back) and are talking with Korean companies to purchase manufacturing equipment.

OLEDNet has also published Philip's OLED Lighting roadmap:

Philips OLED lighting roadmap

Which shows that in the Future Philips will indeed attempt Flexible and Transparent lighting panels. Philips already showed some transparent OLED prototypes a few weeks ago.

OK, I know I'm writing quite a bit on the new Samsung Impression phone - but it's the first AMOLED phone to hit the US, so this is great news for OLEDs. The phone now sales on Amazon for only 50$ (including a plan of course).

Samsung A877 phone

The A877 has a 3.2" touchscreen AMOLED, a QWERTY slide-keyboard, it's a quadband GSM/EDGE/HSDPA phone, and comes with a 3MP camera, GPS and Full HTML browser.

Dai Nippon Printing developed a light-emitting poster - combing LED white backlighting and OLEDs for text info. The LED is emitting a white light behind a printed-color image. The lights are randomly emitted from different areas of the LED, so it appears that the logo and other elements appear and disappear.

Dai Nippon LED/OLED poster

There are two OLED panels at the upper side of the poster, and these display scoll-text. The running cost is low - Nippon says that the cost is only 60% of fluorescent light. The OLEDs have lifetime of 20,000 hours.

One of the exciting markets for OLED displays and lighting is automobiles. OLEDs can be used in several ways - as dashboard displays, windshield displays, interior/exterior lighting, and others.

VW Viseo - futuristic electric car

Auto makers are interested in OLEDs because of their flexible nature, transparency, and obviously the great picture quality and low power consumption. Several companies (including Hyundai, Lexus and VW) have shown concept cars with OLEDs, and some cars (like the Lexus 2010 Rx) already feature OLED displays. 



Read more in our OLED display in cars feature

CNet published an interesting interview with Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon's professional products
marketing division. They discuss why OLEDs aren't available in any Canon product yet.

Chuck says that OLEDs indeed offer high-quality images and lower power consumption, but Canon does not want to rely on other companies manufacturing ability. They are making around 30M cameras (compact and SLRs) each year - so they need quite a bit of capacity...

Agfa, Philips and the Holst Center are showing a large-area (12x12cm2) flexible OLED - without ITO as transparent electrode, and with printed shunting lines. This means that costly materials and lithography processes are not needed, and the OLEDs are much cheaper.

Flexible OLED lighting prototype with no ITO

Up till now, ITO was needed as supporting layer for the PEDOT/PSS* anode layer with lower conductivity. Thanks to Agfa’s high-conductive transparent polymer OrgaconTM, a PEDOT/PSS-based solution with six orders better conductivity than its predecessor, the use of ITO can now be avoided. Proof is the latest OLED lighting demonstrator of Holst Centre’s shared programs: a homogeneous white OLED tile of 12x12cm2 without the use of ITO.

The Samsng A877 Impression is now on sale at AT&T. You can buy it for as low as 50$ with a plan, on Amazon.com.

Samsung A877 phone

The A877 has a 3.2" touchscreen AMOLED, a QWERTY slide-keyboard, it's a quadband GSM/EDGE/HSDPA phone, and comes with a 3MP camera, GPS and Full HTML browser.

Hyundai is showing its new plug-in hybrid concept car, called Blue-Will. It's just a concept, for 'testing new ideas', but it's good to hear that it includes transparent OLED displays on the steering column, which is apparently touch-enabled.

Hyundai Blue-Will plug-in hybrid concept

The futuristic car promises an electric-only driving distance of up to 64km on a single charge and a fuel economy rating of up to 2.2 liters/100 km (106mpg). The Blue-Will concept is powered by an all-aluminum 152hp Gasoline Direct Injected 1.6L which is coupled to a Continuously Variable Transmission and a 100kw electric motor which is at the heart of Hyundai's proprietary parallel hybrid drive architecture. Wheels are turned by power coming directly from the gasoline engine, or the electric motor, or both together, as conditions demand. This parallel hybrid drive architecture serves as the foundation for future Hyundai hybrids, starting with the next-generation Sonata in the U.S.