Pioneer announced it has established a new OLED lighting subsidiary (called Pioneer OLED Lighting Devices). The new company will take over Pioneer's OLED development and production. Pioneer is collaborating with Mitsubishi and is already producing OLED lighting panels (sold under the Verbatim brand).

POLD was launched with a capital of ¥200 million (about $2.1 million). Pioneer says that this new subsidiary will allow them to strengthen their OLED lighting program - in preparation for the OLED lighting market launch in 2014.

Last month Universal Display gave an update regarding their UniversalBarrier single-layer encapsulation technology. They said that the technology is being evaluation by Samsung, and that UDC has a working 6" R&D deposition machine for the encapsulation layer. UDC said the technology is not ready for Samsung's Gen-5.5 line yet.

UDC posted a new job opening today for a Flexible OLED lighting researcher, to do some "advanced development of UDC’s thin film OLED encapsulation technology". The candidate "may take part in technology transfer of the process technologies from UDC’s Pilot Line into a customer’s mass production environment. This may involve frequent international travel". It seems that the company is indeed adapting its technology for Samsung's flexible OLED line.

Apple has hired a new executive into its Display group - Dr. Jueng Jil Lee, a former OLED research fellow at LG Display, who apparently was involved with printing technology research. Dr. Lee's previous employee (before LGD) was Cambridge Display Technology (now owned by Sumitomo).

Apple is interested in OLEDs, and the company already has several patents involving flexible OLEDs, OLED based BLUs for LCDs, OLED control schemes and others. Rumors about OLED products from Apple keep coming (the latest one involving 50" bendable TVs is rather dubious). I guess an OLED iOS product will come eventually - the real question is when...

It seems that Samsung is ready to start producing the 4.99" Full-HD AMOLED panels unveiled at CES 2013. There are reports that mass production will begin on February 2013, initially at a rate of about 3 million units per month (this will grow to almost 10 million monthly units in coming months). Samsung's next flag ship phone (the Galaxy S4?) is expected to be launched by April 2013.

China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) is reportedly advancing in its AMOLED 4.5-Gen R&D line. The company now expects to start trial production by the end Q1 2013.

BOE Ordos AMOLED fab

The same report suggests that BOE Display is also progressing in its 5.5-Gen AMOLED line in Ordos - with hopes to start mass production in Q4 2013. This is earlier then previously estimated (2014). BOE's fab will be able to produce 54,000 monthly substrates (both LCD and AMOLED, on LTPS).

On Sunday I changed the way commenting work on OLED-Info, removing the internal commenting system and enabling Facebook comments. Many people were happy with this, but some readers complained that they cannot use Facebook (due to employee regulations, mostly) - and now they cannot comment.

So I re-enabled OLED-Info's internal commenting system, currently in conjunction with the Facebook comments section. The main reason for disabling our system was spam messages which were difficult to moderate. Hopefully the anti-spam filters now in places will help. I'll keep everyone updated on that...

According to reports from Korea, Samsung Electronics will host a press conference on February 19 (a week after the new year celebrations are over) to finally launch its OLED TV in Korea. The same sources say that LG will start shipping its own OLED TV in Korea on February 20. LG's 55EM9700 OLED TV will cost $10,000 and its likely that Samsung's set will have the same price.

Samsung's F9500 (full model number: KN55F9500) is a 55" Full-HD Real OLED TV. The OLED panel uses direct-emission RGB OLED subpixels, hence the "Real" title. The TV offers all sorts of smart features and active 3D (with MultiView).

According to new rumors, Samsung is set to announce a new dual-AMOLED device at MWC (February 25). The "Samsung Galaxy Q" will feature two Full-HD Super AMOLED panels, a dual-core 1.7GHz Exynos 5250 CUP, 2GB of RAM, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera and Android 4.2.1.

We don't know much else. If this is actually true, it can be a device with two rigid panels (probably the 4.99" ones we've seen at CES?) or it could be using two flexible OLED panels in some cool configuration - maybe akin to the prototype unveiled at CES (see above). Samsung officially launched their YOUM flexible OLED displays last month, but I'm not sure if we can expect such a device so soon.

A couple of weeks ago we reported that the Korean government will attempt to resolve Samsung's and LG OLED technology dispute, and today there are reports that the two companies have agreed to work out their issues. A "peace summit" was held at a Seoul hotel, and Samsung's Kim Ki-nam said that LG and Samsung will resolve the issues one by one. Hopefully we can get this patent fight behind us, hopefully this will accelerate OLED adoption by the two Korean giants.

In November 2012 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.

Update: due to popular demand, the internal commenting system is back online...

I've just experimentally changed OLED-Info's commenting system with a Facebook comments plugin (you can see it just below this post). Commenting is now easier then ever, and hopefully this will increase reader participation.

I'm still not sure if this is the best way to do comments, but I wanted to try it. I'll be happy to hear your thoughts on the new comments! So comment ahead and tell me what you think...