LG says that they already sold 300 84LM9600 TVs in Korea - those are 84" 4K LCD TVs that cost $20,000. LG started to sell those TVs in July 2012, so it's about 300 sets in half a year. LG are quite happy with this number - those TVs are very expensive, and there's still no 4K content of any kind in Korea.

LG's 55EM9700 OLED TV

This is good news I think for the emerging OLED TV market. I think LG's 55EM9700 OLED TV will be more popular than that large LCD TV - although it's smaller at 55" it's also much cheaper ($10,000 in Korea), it's slimmer, thinner and offers a better picture, at least for FHD content. Hopefully LG will also update us on its OLED TV sales in Korea soon.

Back in June 2012 I posted about the new Chinese "Stimulated Blue company" and its AMOLED project. Now I got some new details and corrections for my original story.

First of all, the company's name is AIV-BEX,and not Stimulated Blue. The holding company is Aivtech International Group, a NASDAQ-listed (ticker:AIVI) Shenzhen based maker of audio&video products. The Henan provincial government will provide some of the funding for this project. In fact in November 2012 company official met with Representatives from the Henan government and it seems that the project is progressing smoothly and is actively being supported by the government. In fact they regard it as one of Xinyang Industrial City's key projects.

There are some new conflicting reports regarding AUO's OLED program. According to Digitimes, AUO is still struggling with technology issues (mostly low yields and costs) - and has only managed to produce 126 PPI displays. It's possible that all through 2013 AUO will only be able to make these low density panels, and so only target the entry-level and mid-range mobile phone markets. According to digitimes high-resolution OLED panel orders will go to Samsung instead. Yields at the AUO line is still low at 30%-40%.

According to Chinese site OLEDW, however, AUO managed to overcome the yield issues (reached 60% yield), and HTC will use AUO's 4.65" OLED panels in their upcoming M7 flagship phone (Digitimes says that HTC decided to use Sharp-made LCD panels instead). These 720p panels will sport a high 317 PPI (this panel was unveiled by AUO back in October 2012). OLEDW claims that HTC requires a monthly supply of 2 million panels, and have reserved the entire line output of AUO's 3.5-Gen Linkou, New Taipei City fab (7,000 substrates a month, which is not enough for 2 million panels actually, so some of OLEDW numbers aren't correct). This was already reported several times in the past.

Innovative Technology (IT) are developing a range of large-capacity Gas Purifiers specifically for the OLED market. IT are working closely with OLED companies to make sure the new purifiers will be better integrated with OLED production lines.

The new systems will be scaled up to accommodate the larger volume enclosures of OLED manufacturing facilities. IT says that the next-gen systems will be able to handle about 7 times the volume of current purifiers. The company plans to finalize the optimization of the new purifiers by the beginning of Q2 2013.

Update: Philips uploaded the webinar's recording, you can listen to it here.

Our friend Dietmar Thomas (Philips Lumiblade's spokesperson) will host a free Webinar on January 22 (titled "Explore the world of OLED lighting") - during which he'll update on Philips' OLED lighting technologies and will also answer questions.

According to reports, the Korean government will attempt to resolve Samsung's and LG OLED technology dispute. Policymakers in Korea say that cannot afford this conflict to escalate because Japanese and Taiwanese display makers are advancing in their own OLED technologies - potentially harming Korea's interests.

The latest news from that dispute came in November 2012 when Samsung filed a patent invalidation suit against seven of LGD's OLED patents. Two months earlier, 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.

Universal Display's CFO, Sidney Rosenblatt, participated in an investor conference (the 15th Annual Needham Growth Conference, January 15). This was an interesting presentation. Sidney confirmed that Samsung's next AMOLED products will include the company's green PHOLED material (and probably the host too), which will make them more efficient (by 25%). The new products will be released in Q1 or Q2 2013. According to reports, this will be the Full-HD 4.99" 440PPI display prototype shown at CES.

Regarding Samsung's flexible display program, Sidney says that Samsung is still using LTPS. The production process is too hot for the plastic substrate (it will melt) and so the LTPS transistors are deposited on glass and the glass is later delaminated. The encapsulation technology is Vitex's multi-layer technology which is very slow (the panel has to enter the evaporation chamber 6 times). All this means that plastic displays will be more expensive than glass ones.

Taiwan's ITRI institute says that OLED TV shipments will outpace UHD ones by 2015. While in 2013 only 50,000 OLED TVs will be sold (compared to 500,000 UHD ones), in 2015 OLED TV shipments will rise to 3.24 million compared to 3.2 million UHD TVs. In 2017, ITRI sees over 10 million OLED TVs sold compared to only 6 million UHD TVs. It's not clear how they count UHD OLED TVs...

ITRI explains that the dramatic OLED TV market increase forecast is based on improving yield rates and more companies joining the OLED TV market. UHD on the other hand is limited because it's only useful in panels 50" or above (which is not entirely true. Panasonic for example unveiled a 4K 20" tablet display which they will start producing soon).

BOE Display developed a 17" Oxide-TFT AMOLED prototype that was produced in an ink-jet printing process. They say that this is the first time these an Oxide-TFT OLED panel was ink-jet printed successfully, but I'm not sure if that's actually true because I think Panasonic's printed 56" OLED TV shown at CES also sports an Oxide-TFT. Still this is a great achievement by BOE.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

A few months ago we reported that BOE started construction of their 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab in Ordos (Inner Mongolia) which will produce 54K substrates a month. According to earlier reports, the fab cost is estimated at $3.44 billion. BOE's plan is apparently to first start with LTPS LCD and only in 2014 start producing AMOLED panels as well. It's probable that the ink-jet based process is even further away...

During CES Sony unveiled some new LED-backlit LCD TVs under the Triluminos brand, which use QDvision's quantum dot films to enhance the color gamut. Apparently the new TV's color gamut is quite close to OLED TVs, although the contrast is not as good. As far as we know these are the first TVs to use Quantum Dots enhancement films.

According to reports, the company no longer develops Q-LED (or QDLED) displays as these panels have been too difficult to produce reliably, and they now focus on the QD films. I interviewed QDVision's CTO and co-founder back in 2009 - and this still gives a good introduction to QDots.