Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun says that Samsung is getting "huge" orders from other electronic makers for flexible OLED panels. Kwon re-confirms the plan to produce flexible OLEDs in 2012. According to reports, Samsung has converted several OLED lines for flexible panels, and these lines will produce 960,000 OLED "sheets" by the end of year (it's not clear what is meant by a "sheet", and whether this is a monthly or yearly capacity).

The same reports also suggest that Apple may be behind those "huge" orders. We do know that Apple is interested in flexible OLEDs, but it doesn't seem likely that they are actually planning to start using these displays soon. In any case the first "flexible" OLEDs will probably not be really flexible. They will be plastic based though, which means that they are quite shutterproof, in addition to being thin and light. It will also be possible to fix them on curved surfaces.

Nippon Seiki has entered the OLED lighting market, and is already producing and offering "low-priced" panels. Low cost is relative of course - the 90x90 mm panel costs ¥8,000 ($100). The company is now offering samples because they want to get user feedback to improve the technology and products.

NS are currently offering three kinds of panels: a 90x90 mm square, a 280x38 rectangle and a 140x38 mm rectangle. All the panels are 1.9mm thick and feature 30,000 hours lifetime (LT70). The brightness is 1,000 cd/m² (maximum 3,000 cd/m²) with color temperatures of either 3,000K or 5,000K.

The Fraunhofer Institute has been showing their bi-directional OLED microdisplays for quite some time, and today they said that during SID 2012 they will unveil an evaluation kit of their see-through data eye-glasses for the first time. Fraunhofer's glasses are made from monochrome VGA bi-directional OLED microdisplays and use special eyetracking algorithms.

We don't have more technical details yet, but the 2011 demo unit inlcuded a monochrome AMOLED display (320x240) and a 160x120 monochrome camera. The brightness was 15,000 cd/m² and the chip size was 0.6" diagonal. Back then they said they are working on higher resolution displays (VGA and above) and smaller chip sizes (0.5"). So indeed the resolution is now higher (VGA).

Just a few minutes ago we posted about Samsung's claim that they used Pentile in the Galaxy S3 because it lasts longer. There are some reports however that Samsung already managed to produce Super AMOLED HD Plus 4.8" display. In fact it is said that they are using this display in a Tizen (open source OS) development model that they handed out to some developers.

It may be that Samsung cannot yet mass produce such displays, and so they couldn't use it in the S3. Anyway we'll probably know more soon...

Update: We discussed this with Nuovoyance's VP, he explains better why PenTile displyas lasts longer...

Some people really dislike Pentile displays, but Samsung keep producing AMOLED with PenTile - even in their flagship devices such as the new Galaxy S3 (which sports a 4.8" 1280x720 HD Super AMOLED). Today we hear that Samsung says that one of the major advantages of PenTile AMOLED displays is increased lifetime.

In PenTile displays, there are twice as many green subpixels as there are blue suxpixels. Blue OLEDs feature the lowest lifetime, and so Pentile displays "tend" to last longer, according to Samsung. In any case, as the resolution gets higher, it's getting harder to actually notice the "fuzziness" caused by the Pentile Matrix...

eMagin reported their financial results for Q1 2012. Revenues were $6.1 million (a company record, and a 13% increase compared to last year) and net loss was $452,000. The company saw an increase of 35% in product revenue, and a 59% increase in the number of display produced.

The company hopes that during Q2 they will complete the testing of the new OLED deposition machine and will begin production. They expect OLED deposition capacity to increase by tenfold and also higher yields.

DisplayMate performed some testing of several smartphones and tablets under bright ambient lighting. The handset that came on top was Nokia's Lumia 900 (which uses the company' ClearBlack Display technology and an AMOLED display). The second-best handsets are the iPhone 4 and the Super-AMOLED packing Samsung Galaxy S.

Samsung officially launched their 55" Super OLED TV today. The model number will be ES9500, but we still do not know the release date or price (some estimate it to be around 10 million Won, or $8,700). The ES9500 will support active-shutter 3D and also Samsung's Dual-View technology (enables two different 2D program via the active-shutter 3D glasses).

The ES9500 includes several smart interaction technologies including remote control, voice control, motion control and face recognition (it includes a camera). It features a Smart Evolution upgradeable dual-core CPU. Samsung says that color reproduction is 20% better compared to LED LCDs

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q1 2012: revenues were $12.6 million, and the net loss was $1.2 million. This is a surprise as most analysts expected a profit, and the stock price is dropping around 10%. In Q1 2011 the company reported $9.6 million in revenue.

The company hosted a conference call after releasing the results. First of all we learned that Samsung will pay $30 million in licence fees in 2012. The agreement states that Samsung pays twice a year, in Q2 and Q4. The license fees will grow in 2013.

Samsung's Galaxy S3 is now up for pre-order in the UK for £499.95, or $808 (that's a sim-free, 16GB model). According to Amazon it will ship on May 30. The S3 has a 4.8" 1280x720 HD Super AMOLED (with Pentile), a quad-core 1.4Ghz CPU, 1GB of RAM and an 8 mp camera (1080p video). The phone includes several new software technologies: voice recognition, gesture control, smart sharing and intelligent camera features.