Digitimes Research posted about Philips lighting unit, and they said that the company's goal is to reach an efficiency of 120 lm/W for their OLED lighting panels by 2019. We talked to Philips and indeed they confirm this number. Philips is gearing up to start production in their new Aachen production plant which will increase production capacity tenfold and will also lower prices considerably.

This is quite an increase from the panels Philips make today. The regular Lumiblades offer around 12 lm/W, while the Lumiblade Plus (a phosphorescent panel, developed by Konica Minolta and produced by Philips) offers 45 lm/W. We reviewed Philips' new Lumiblades recently, here's the short hands on video:

Samsung announced that they sold over 5 million Galaxy S II phones in South Korea. This is the first time a single phone model reached that number in Korea. Samsung calls the S II Korea's "national phone" - and it makes sense as 25% of phone owners in Korea (about 20 million) use it!

Samsung's Galaxy S2 is the successor to the popular Galaxy S. It has a 4.3" WVGA Super AMOLED plus display, 1.2Ghz dual-core processor, NFC, Bluetooth 3 and HSPA+. It's only 8.49mm thick at its thinnest point.

Samsung's NX200 is now shipping in the US for $899 including a 18-55mm lens, 16GB SD card, camera bag, spare battery and a Red Giant Adorama productioon bundle.

The NX-200 is an APS-C (micro-four-thirds) mirrorless DSLR camera (the successor to the NX100). It sports a 20.3mp sensor, Full-HD videos, 0.1-second autofocus speed and a 3" VGA AMOLED display.

Amazon.com is now offering Samsung's Super AMOLED plus packing Tab 7.7 (P6800) - for $749. This is an unlocked model, probably with 16GB of memory - and it's shipping now. This is a lot cheaper than in the UK - where it costs over $1,250 (£808) and will only ship in 1-2 months. This seems to be a model bought in Korea and shipped to the US.

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 is the world's first tablet with an OLED display, a 7.7" Super AMOLED Plus panel, offering 1280x800 resolution. Other specs include Android v3.2, Dual-core 1.4 Ghz processor, HSPA+ radio, 16GB to 64GB internal storage and a microSD slot, Wi-Fi, GPS and two cameras (3MP and 2MP).

Here's a video showing Toshiba's 7.7" AMOLED Tablet prototype unveiled at CES 2012:

According to our information, that AMOLED display does not use PenTile, which probably means it's a Super AMOLED Plus panel, the same one that Samsung uses in their own Galaxy 7.7 Tab.

Blackbody is exhibiting in the Maison & Objet conference in Paris, showing their latest OLED chandeliers - including some classics like the Big Bang, and some new ones like the I.Rain by Thierry Gaugain, shown below.

Blackbody says that they have already installed several chandeliers at different places. For example the "Wishing Tree" by Aldo Cibic is installed in the opera Ristori in Verona, Italy, while the Mini Bang is installed in Hotel particulier XVIIIe siècle in Paris.

Researchers from Cambridge University and Ignis Innovation developed a new energy harvested that sits inside a mobile phone with an OLED display and harvests energy from the light that is projected to the display's sides. The researchers say that up to 64% of the light is lost in typical OLED displays - much of it projected to the edges of the display. The idea is simple - to place an array of thin-film hydrogenated a-Si solar cells around the OLED. These cells can also harvest ambient light.

The researchers made a complete system design - instead of charging the battery with the power generated (which would be quite complex) they added a supercapacitor for intermediate energy storage. They say the system achieves an average efficiency of 11% and peak efficiency of 18%, while the PV array converts around 5% of the ambient light to electricity. They say that on a typical 3.7" OLED display the maximum power output is 5 milliwatts. Useful, but not significant compared to the phone's power needs, so it's not clear whether this is worth the extra cost, size and weight.

Remember Daimler's Smart Forvision concept EV? That car has a transparent solar-panels on the roof, see-through dashboard and transparent OLEDs for internal lighting - on the roof of the car. We knew that Daimler was collaborating with BASF on this concept, and today BASF released a press release saying that indeed they developed those panels together with Philips.

The OLEDs are transparent when switched off, allowing for a clear view outside the vehicle, yet providing light only within the vehicle when switched on. The transparent OLED sandwich structure can be combined with equally transparent solar cells, as was demonstrated in the Smart Forvision. This development was achieved as part of a longstanding cooperation (since 2006) between BASF and Philips in the research and development of OLED modules.

Japan's Tazmo has developed a new flexible Inorganic LED panel that is quite efficient at 30 lm/W. Tazmo is using a coating process - which is easily adapter for I-LEDs as they have a simpler element structure when compared to OLEDs.

The new panel is A4 in size (210x297mm) and can easily be bent. I-LED is different from LEDs as they use the EL (electroluminescence) phenomenon. We do not know how close to commercialization this is.

Update: Futaba asked me to remove the roadmap from my site...

Back in October 2011 Futaba bought out TDK's part in their joint OLED company, which is now a subsidiary of Futaba. Today we got hold of Futaba's OLED roadmap for 2011-2015. For the consumer market, Futaba is currently offering small (around 2") PMOLED displays. They are also offering 2.4" transparent panels, but it seems to be made in small quantities.

Futaba is also planning to start using OLEDs in printer heads. They currently use VFD technology and will adopt OLEDs in 2012-2013. For the automotive market, Futaba currently offers 0.9", 2.0", 3.4" and 3.5" monochrome panels,The company is also interested in round shaped OLEDs.