IHS iSuppi posted a "virtual teardown" for the upcoming Galaxy S4, saying that the bill of materials is about $236 (for the HSPA+ S4 with 16 gigabytes of NAND flash). According to iSuppli, the 5" Full-HD Super AMOLED display costs $75. As the 4.8" WXGA AMOLED on the S3 costs $65, this represents the largest cost increase for the S4 compared to its predecessor (The cost of making an S3 is estimated at $208). The cost of the AMOLED display is over 30% of the cost of the entire S4.

Other expensive components on the HSPA+ S4: the Exynos 5 processor at $30, memory (NAND + Flash) at $28, the two cameras at $20, the UI and sensor subsystem at $16 and the HSPA+ chip at $16. You can see the complete list on the table above, which includes also the S4 LTE and S3 Built-Of-Materials (BOM) estimates.

At CES 2013 Panasonic unveiled a 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel prototype that was produced using an all-printing method. Back in January we assumed Panasonic were using SMOLED materials, but now Sumitomo Chemical revealed (as part of their 2013-2015 plan presentation) that this TV prototype used the company's PLED materials.

Panasonic has been working on OLED printing technologies for quite some time and back in 2009, they teamed up with Sumitomo to jointly-develop OLED TVs, based on Sumitomo's PLED materials and technology. I thought this partnership is not active anymore, but evidently I was wrong on that one.

Today we reached 2,000 fans on Facebook - and I think that's a reason for a small celebration post. So here it is. I'd like to say thanks for all our loyal readers that help us spread the OLED news around. If you're not a fan already, you can hop over to our Facebook page and become one now.

OLEDs are getting more popular by the day. Besides the 2,000 fans on Facebook, we got over 1,100 Twitter followers and over 13,000 newsletter subscribers. Oh, and 50 Google+ friends. So now you can choose your favorite social network and get your OLED news and updates easily...

Raymond Soneira, Displaymate's display guru (and our friend) has previously criticized Samsung for the lack of calibration on their AMOLED displays - the colors are too saturated, the whites are too blue, and the intensity scales are too steep. This is hopefully going to change with the S4 however. Samsung is including a new feature in the S4 called Adapt Display that offers seven automatic modes and four manual modes - to provide the optimal viewing experience.

As Raymond points out, Samsung's own S4 site shows a CIE chromaticity diagram and a gray scale level picker (see screenshot above). This leads Raymond to believe that the S4 will have extensive color, white-point, and display calibration adjustments. This could be a "major display advancement and a win for Samsung and AMOLED displays" - according to Raymond.

Last week we posted about Nanomarket's three OLED lighting scenarios (which are mass adoption, niche market and the death of OLED lighting). Nanomarkets are still optimistic about the OLED lighting market, but they do not see mass adoption coming soon. In fact, in a recent blog post they say that no OLED lighting takeoff will happen till 2017. Previously they estimated that it may start in 2015.

This is partly a technical issue (everybody still suffers from low yields) but mostly because they do not see any company investing in real mass production facilities. Nanomarkets are looking for an OLED lighting champion - and they do not see one appearing any time soon. The do not see the OLED lighting revenues to reach more than a few hundred million dollars annually for quite a few more years, and in this case it does not make sense to invest billions in mass production facilities...

Samsung unveiled their new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. As expected, it sports a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1080, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display behind a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. This phone will launch towards the end of April worldwide (on 327 carriers in 155 countries). The S4 seems to be more of an upgrade to the S3 than a revolutionary new handset.

According to previous reports, Samsung Display started producing these 5" Full-HD AMOLED panels in February at a rate of 3 million units per moth (this will grow to almost 10 million monthly units in coming months). The S3 is Samsung's best selling and fastest selling smartphone, and obviously the company hopes that the S4 will sell even better.

A couple of weeks ago SamMobile reported that according to their sources, the S4 will use an LCD not an AMOLED display. A week later they posted that the S4 will actually use an OLED. Samsung will announce the S4 tomorrow and we'll know for certain, but in the meanwhile the same blog now reports that the Note 3 may use an LCD, according to their sources.

I don't know whether we should regard those SamMobile reports as serious, but they do still create a hype and a lot of sites re-post these articles - so I wanted to post on it as well. According to the new rumor, an insider from Samsung says that the company is still in internal discussions regarding the upcoming display. If they choose an LCD, they might go with the latest ones from Sharp.

NEC Lighting developed transparent OLED lighting panels that use a transparent ITO film - and they plan to commercialize these panels by 2015. The company unveiled a prototype 20x20 cm panel that features 70% transmittance, 35 lm/W efficacy and 20,000 hours lifetime (not sure if that's LT70 or LT50). This panel was developed in collaboration with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Organization (NEDO).

Last week NEC Lighting announced that they developed the world's most efficient OLED device to day at 156 lm/W.

eMagin reported their financial results for Q4 2012 - revenues were $8.3 million (up from $8 million in Q4 2011), and net income was $1.8 million. In 2012 eMagin generated revenues of $30.6 million (up from $29.2 in 2011) and the net income was $2.3 million. During 2012 the company purchased $2.5 million of equipment, repurchased 125,000 shares and paid a one-time $3.1 million dividend. Currently eMagin has about $13.4 million in cash and they expect revenues in 2013 to be in the range of $34 - $39 million.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

Their new SNU deposition machine broke down in Q4 and they didn't produce any displays on it during the most of November and December 2012. These issues were fixed and production is now back on track.

Nanomarkets posted an interesting article regarding the OLED lighting market. They present three scenarios. The first one is mass adoption of OLED lighting for the general consumer market. Nanomarket says that while the technology is advancing quickly, for mass market to happen, the OLED makers will need to make massive investment in production fabs.

Nanomarkets says say that an "OLED lighting champion" company must emerge to make this happen. They seem to think that this scenario does not seem likely in the next few years. Possible champions include Philips, Osram, Panasonic, GE, LG and Samsung. Nanomarkets does not believe that any one of those companies will be able to make a risky decision to invest the billions of dollars required.