iSupply says the OLED displays for mobile phones (main displays) are expected to rise from 178m units in 2015 - up from 22.2m in 2009 (that's a factor of eight).

iSupply OLED mobile phone shipment forcast graph

And beyond the other allures offered by OLED, the technology is more environmentally sustainable compared to that of conventional LCDs. OLEDs will still acount for a small part of the total market - only 6% in 2013.  iSupply says that the only factors limiting great penetratration is the limited number of suppliers and factories. In an interesting note, iSupply says that the 2.6" OLED in the N85 costs 7.05$. An equivalent LCD would have cost 6.5$. That's only 8% more.

The OLED World Summit takes place in just 3 weeks. As the only event dedicated exclusively to the OLED industry, this renowned international summit will bring together leading researchers, developers, manufacturers, end users, and visionaries to discuss market forecasts, technology developments and application reviews.

We're happy to give our readers a special 40% discount for the event. You can buy tickets online, and use our coupon- OLEDInfo40.

LG seems to be quite unsure as to their own 32" OLED TV plans. The latest news is that an LG spokesperson, talking to TechRadar, said that their current plan is to release the TV in 2010.

Previously, the plan was to release those TVs in 2012.

Sony has posted an interesting interview with Tetsuo Urabe (Senior Vice President, Display Device Development Group, Sony), together with 3 other Sony engineers received the 55th Okochi Memorial Award.

Tutsuo tells us how they started with a 13-inch prototype in 2001, the challenges in establishing mass-production of OLED displays, and the difficult work they had to do in order to meet the December 2007 shipment deadline.

Peptronics is an Israeli company, working on Polymer OLED materials. Their idea is to use a biological-based method to make the OLEDs. In the human body, we have 20 amino acids, used as building blocks for proteins. In the same way, they have made several "OLED building blocks", which can be used to create OLED materials, using Peptronics' peptide based technology.

Peptronics green OLED prototype

There are two types of OLEDs today: Small Molecules and Polymer based. Small Molecules are efficient and relatively easy to make, and are used in small displays today. But it is difficult to print them, and it is not easy to create a large panel using other methods. Polymer OLEDs are easily printable, and thus can be used to make large TVs - but their lifetime is short and they are less efficient.

Peptronics say that it will be possible to print cheap, large OLED TVs using their materials - which in fact will be printable (because they are polymer based), but also efficient - so it is the best of both worlds. The new materials can also be used for OLED lighting.

Peptronics are currently working on the finding the best "building-blocks" and creating numerous polymers from these building blocks using high throughput parallel synthesis. They then hope to sell their materials (or material-making systems).

The IFA 2009 exhibition starts today, and several companies will be showing OLED displays. Samsung is still showing the same 14.1" and 31" panels they showed us a while back, while LG is unveiling their new 15" OLED TV. Here's a new photo that LG uploaded to Flickr today:

The LG TV specs : 1366 x 768 resolution, 1.7mm width, and a contrast ratio of 100,000:1.

OLED is an emissive display technology - which means that it emits its own light, in contrast to a reflective display - which uses an external light source - an ePaper display for example, or an LCD which is a display that blocks light from a backlight unit.

OLEDs are bright, and provide great image quality, and as of 2021, these displays perform very well under direct sunlight.

But this was not always the case. In early AMOLED displays, sunlight readability was very poor. The 2008 Nokia N85 for example, one of the first products with AMOLED displays, behaved very poorly in direct sunlight, as can be seen in the image below:

The problem in early AMOLED displays resulted from reflectance from metal electrodes in addition to relatively low brightness. Display makers however, soon upgraded their OLED displays to increase performance. Helped by new technologies and materials, OLED displays quickly overcame the sunlight readability problem. Today OLED displays actually perform better than the best LCDs in direct sunlight.

For more information on OLED display technology click here.

Update - the pre-order price has been lowered to 699$...

Amazon are now offering the Samsung Omnia II, unlocked, for pre-order - for 999$. The Omnia II has a 3.7" touch AMOLED (800x480). It's a HSDPA phone with a 5Mp camera, video recording at 30fps, internal memory of 2GB to 16GB, microSD slot, WiFi,
A-GPS and TouchWiz UI 2.0. 

Samsung says that the Omnia II will be available soon for the Verizon network.

LG Display have updated their official OLED product page, and they now list the 15" HD panel. Here are the technical details:

• Resolution: 1366 x 768


• Width: 1.7 mm


• 16.7 million colors


• Luminence: 200 cd/m², peak: 440 cd/m²


• Contrast: larger than 100,000 : 1.


• Color Gamut (NTSC%) : larger than 87%


• Response time : smaller than 0.01 msec


• Interface : LVDS