Micro Technology developed a new glass that is ultra thin (only 20um). It can be used as a substrate for flexible displays. The company made an OLED panel made using this new technology. They plan to offer this technology to FPD makers in the "near future".
Remember the Dupont employee that tried to steal OLED technology trade secrets and give them to Peking University in Beijing? He is named Hong Meng, and he pleaded guilty on Tuesday. Meng is facing up to 10 years in prison.
Korea's ETRI (Electronics Telecommunications Research Institute) has announced the 2nd OLED Lighting competition. Winners will be awarded a "grand prize" along with prize money from the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. You can enter your designs until the 30th of July 2010.
ETRI 1st OLED lighting competition winner
AUO has developed a new 2.4" transparent AMOLED that has an in-cell touch panel - they say it's the world's first. They target it for GPS applications mainly (where users could capture their actual locations for the navigation system to recognize, and make use of the convenient touchscreen interface to find their ways easily). AUO will show this new display at Display Taiwan 2010.
It's interesting to see how AUO's in-cell touch panel compares to Samsung's Super-AMOLED (which also has a touch-panel, but is not transparent).
TMZ, a supplier of OLED manufacturing technology claims that China is investing heavily in OLEDs - they want to challenge South-Korea.
TMZ is a joint-venture between Cymer and Carl-Zeiss, selling lasers for OLED manufacturing. They have already installed one system in Korea, and plan to deliver the 2nd system to a Chinese company soon.
Apple has announced the new iPhone 4. The display is a 3.5" IPS-LCD (960x640, 800:1 contrast ratio), which Apple calls a "Retina display". Why "Retina"? Because the dpi is 326ppi - "beyond the human eye's limit of distinction". Steve Jobs says that it's better than an OLED display. Even if they wanted to use OLED, no one can make enough panels...
iPhone 4
Other than the new display, the iPhone 4 is still a 3G (UMTS) phone based on the new A4 processor. It's thinner than the 3GS, but has a bigger battery (it's rated at 7 hours of 3G talk). Other features include Wi-Fi (802.11n), gyroscope, new front-facing camera, 5MP back camera that can record HD video (720p @30fps). The iPhone 4 will be available in white or black, will cost $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB, and will go on sale June 24th.
Idemitsu Kosan said they have signed an agreement to acquire a 32.73% stake in Global OLED Technology. Global OLED Technology is owned by LG, and this company has over 2,000 OLED patents (LG created this company when it bought Kodak's OLED business back in December 2009).
Update: Nikkei.com reports that the deal is estimated at "several billion yen" (a billion yen is about $11 million). This makes sense, as LG originally bought the whole patent portfolio for $100 million.
Samsung has revealed the Galaxy Tab - a 7" tablet that runs on Android with the TouchWiz UI. This tablet was leaked a while back (and referred to as the S-Pad), and it was said to be using a Super-AMOLED display. We still don't know the display type of the Galaxy Tab. We can only hope for an OLED...
Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab
A new Samsung PMP was leaked yesterday (via the Bluetooth forum). The YP-MB2 will offer a 4" touch AMOLED, Android OS, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS and Touchwiz 3.0. That's all we know so far...
Today we learned that Visionox's AMOLED pilot production line was completed, and is able to produce OLED displays up to 17", although Visionox will start will 3" to 12" products, and will only start 17" products later. The line was developed in cooperation with the Kunshan Industrial Technology Research Institute (K-ITRI).
Visionox AMOLED production line
Visionox has been cooperating with AU Optronics on a 2.4" AMOLED display product.
