My first meeting at SID was with Universal Display's Janice Mahon. UDC had some pretty interesting updates for us at SID, and some nice exhibits in the booth as well - only OLED lighting panels, but quite interesting ones. This post will be rather long...

Update: Here's the complete list of OLED related posts and notes from SID 2012

So, SID 2012 is now over. Personally it was a very good show, even though I hear from many exhibitors that it was slow compared to past years. There were a lot of companies showing OLED displays, lighting panels and related products, and it seems that OLEDs are starting to become mainstream. I do plan to post in-depth posts with interesting details of my talks with various OLED companies, but in the meantime, here's my own "best of SID" list.

LG Display announced it developed a 5" Full-HD LCD panel, the smallest Full-HD (1920x1080 at 440 ppi!) panel in the world. The LCd panel is based on LGD's AH-IPS (Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching) technology.

Samsung announce that it had sold over 28 million Galaxy S II phones and over 24 million Galaxy S phones: over 50 million together.

The Fraunhofer IPMS Institute developed an OLED microdisplay that emits light in the NIR light spectrum. They say that this has several applications such as higher penetration depths in human tissues in the photoplethysmography, in the photodynamic therapy or for invisible light barriers.

In the photo above you can see a bi-directional OLED microdisplay (a 0.6" QVGA, 320x240 one) that emits light in the NIR spectrum on the bottom right (and the visible spectrum in the rest of the panel). On the left it is photographed with a normal camera that has a NIR filter (so it does not record NIR light). On the right you see the same display photographed with a camera that has no NIR filter.

C|Net Asia posted an interesting interview with three LG executives, discussing their upcoming OLED TVs. LG's current plan is to sell around 50,000 TVs in 2012. This is a small amount (previous LG estimates were about 250,00 units) - and LG says this is mostly because they will have very limited time to market those TVs, and also because the OLED TV market is still in its infancy.

LG sees OLED TVs becoming mainstream and affordable as early as 2014. saying it's possible that OLED TVs will only be 50% more expensive than LED TVs by then. This is largeley dependent on consumer demand and technology advancement. According to LG's forecasts, by 2015 around 50% of 47" and larger panels will be based on OLED technology. Finally, the executives revealed Lg's "confidential" plans to launch 4K OLED TVs in 2013...

Novaled have developed a new class of n-doped electron transport layer (ETL) materials, suitable for both OLED TV and small mobile display applications. Novaled have developed two new new air-stable dopants (called NDN-77 and NDN-87) and two new host molecules (called NET-164 and NET-142). Combining these different materials can lead to different efficiency, voltage and lifetime in the final display.

Novaled says that the new materials can feature as much as double the lifetime compared to their previous materials.

NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu have jointly developed a transparent OLED panel that is touch enabled on both sides. The companies unveiled a prototype 2.4" QVGA (320x240) panel:

Yesterday we reported about Sharp's new IGZO based OLED. Here's a nice video showing the new displays, and also explaining Sharp's new crystal structure innovation that enables those displays. According this video, Sharp is not planning commercialization yet:

In the video you can see Sharp's two OLED prototypes. The first panel is a 13.5" 3840x2160 (QFHD) panel (326 ppi, WOLED/RGBW architecture). The second is a 3.4" flexible OLED (326 ppi as well, 540x960).

Samsung's NX20 is now shipping for $1,099 (including a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens). The NX20 is Samsung's flagship interchangeable lens camera. It has 20.3 mp APS-C CMOS sensor, has a built-in SVGA EVF, Wi-Fi, Full-HD video and the ISO range is up to 12,800. The display is a tilt-and-swivel VGA 3" AMOLED (with PenTile).