Samsung's Galaxy S3 mini is now shipping in Europe, and it's available in the US unlocked for $420. The S3 mini is an Android v4.1 phone that features a 4" WVGA Super AMOLED display, 1Ghz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16 GB of flash storage (and a microSD slot), NFC and a 5mp camera (720p video).
The legal war between Samsung and LG Display continues: today Samsung Electronics filed a patent invalidation suit against LG Display, saying that seven of its OLED patents are invalid as they lack innovation. We do not know yet what patents are involved.
Two months ago LG Display filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics over OLED technology, saying that Samsung infringed upon seven of its OLED patents which relate to the design of the OLED panel, the driver circuitry and device design. LG seeks damages - and also a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung's Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in South Korea. We assume that the seven patents in Samsung's new suit are those same patents.
Back in June Mitsubishi announced that they completed the installation of the 9.6 x 1.9 meters 160-degrees concave Diamond Vision OLED display at Narita Airport. This cool display (called Panorama Vision) ;is made from 2,000 96 x 96 mm PMOLED panels. Now we found this video showing this display in action:
This is Mitsubishi's third Diamond Vision OLED installation that we know about. The first one was a 3.84x2.3 meter display installed at Merck's research center and the second was the 6" Geo-Cosmos sphere installed at Tokyo's Science Museum.
Last week we reported that Samsung decided to use OLED technology in its upcoming Full-HD mobile phone display, and today we hear that Samsung plans to unveil this panel at CES 2013 (January 8-11). The panel's size is 4.99" which means 441 PPI (at 1920x1080). Back in October it was reported that Samsung managed to reach 400 PPI using a modified FMM technology.
A 4.99" display is quite larger than the S3 (4.8") and it's not clear whether this will be used in the upcoming S4 phone (I think there's a limit to the size of Samsung's main flagship smartphone). The Note II has a 5.5" display, so the new panel is somewhat between those two phones. Samsung may be able to put this larger display into a case with the same as as the S3 one, by narrowing the bezel and perhaps removing the home button.
Konica Minolta and NEDO (Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) developed a new OLED lighting panel that uses a transparent conductive film instead of ITO. KM presented a prototype 130x130 mm panel:
We don't have any technical info on the new film, but KM says it's highly conductive and has a lower resistance compared to ITO.
Universal Display has approved a $50 million share repurchase program over the next twelve month. The repurchases will be on the open market.
As of September 30 2012 UDC had about $239 in cash. In early 2011 the they raised $250 million. They said they are looking at IP acquisition and indeed in July 2012 UDC bought Fujifilm's OLED IP portfolio for $105 million. In September the company said it does not see any large acquisitions ahead. In addition, patent litigation has pretty much ended in Japan and in Korea
A couple of weeks ago we heard reports that Samsung will abandon AMOLED technology in favor of LCD for their next generation flagship phone because they want to have a Full-HD display and they cannot achieve this resolution with OLEDs. New reports from Korea suggest that Samsung Electronics decided to stick with OLEDs. Samsung Display is apparently certain it will be able to produce such high-resolution OLED displays using a modified FMM process.
This is of course great news for Samsung Display and the OLED industry. Obviously we'll have to wait and see whether Samsung actually managed to mass production displays using the new technology. Otherwise Samsung Electronics will have to delay their new flagship phone and this will be a major setback for the company.
eMagin announced that it signed a contract extension with Sagem for the exclusive supply of OLED Microdisplays for FELIN (Integrated Infantryman Equipment and Communications). The new extension includes about 15,000 additional microdisplays. eMagin is the exclusive OLED supplier to FELIN and future Sagem Optronics products through 2017. Sagem will also gain early access to a soon-to-be-announced family of new eMagin OLED microdisplays (perhaps the high brightness 2000x2000 ones).
The original agreement was signed in 2006 and included OLEDs for helmet mounted displays, weapon sights and target designators. eMagin says they shipped over 17,000 OLED microdisplays to Sagem to date.
BMW announced a new sport steering wheel (the M Performance) that aims to display data and info on the wheel itself. It includes a small white PMOLED display on the top and two LED meters on the sides. These displays can show you average fuel consumption, speed, oil and water temperature, g-force and cues for gear shifts.
The M Performance steering wheel costs $1,700.
Universal Display reported their financial results for Q3 2012. Revenues were $12.5 million (down from $21.8 million in Q3 2011). Net loss was $5.5 million (compared to a net income of $6.0 million in Q3 2011). UDC lowered their 2012 revenue forecast to be in the range of $80 to $82 million (previous expectations were $90 million to $110 million). This is obviously very disappointing, and UDC shares dropped about 40% after market (after falling 12% during the day).
The major setback from UDC's point of view is that Samsung Display did not adopt green emitter and host materials as expected. UDC still thinks SD will adopt green, probably early next year. Samsung is still using UDCs red PHOLED material, but they didn't add more production capacity and so red emitter sales are rather flat (although when compared to 2011, red emitter sales grew 89%) - and will probably continue to be so in the near future.
