Peratech announced an innovative new touch screen technology for OLED displays. The QTC Ultra Sensor is a pressure-based touch technology, that is applied behind the display. Regular touch layers are transparent films placed in front of displays, which reduce the light output (brightness). This new sensor is accurate, low on power and supports multi-touch and can also sense the amount of pressure.

Pertech says that the new sensor can be used for OLED and e-paper displays, as these can actually be pressed (unlike LCD panels, in which pressing them is not advisable). It doesn't have a to be a flexible OLED, it works behind glass - and a deflection of a micron or so all that is needed for QTC Ultra to sense the touch.

The latest report from Korea's Yonhap News Agency say that the Samsung is set to launch their first OLED TVs next week. The 55" TVs will cost around 10 million won ($8,700) - which is actually cheaper than LG's OLED TV (these already ship and cost 11 million won, or about $9,600). Yonhap say that Samsung may also launch their curved OLED TVs at the same time.

Back in May we heard that Samsung finally managed to increase the OLED TV panel production yields in their pilot line to 60%, and this will be enough to launch their first OLED TVs in July 1st, 2013. Hopefully we won't have to wait much longer. A couple of weeks ago it was also reported that Samsung is set to unveil a 75" OLED TV at the IFA 2013 exhibition (in early September) - and the company aims to start producing those larger banls towards the end of 2013 or early in 2014.

LG Display says they expect to start mass producing flexible OLEDs in Q4 2013 and supply them to "major clients". One of these clients is LG Electronics who want to produce the first flexible-OLED phone by the end of 2013.

LGD says that they already completed the development of those displays. As far as we know LG's flexible panels uses polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use an WRGB technology - white OLEDs with color filters). The first panels won't actually be flexible, but they may be curved. They will also be lighter, thinner and much more durable compared to glass-based OLEDs.

The UK's Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) published a short video with a concept automobile that uses all sorts of printed electronics devices. There's a very nice OLED Lighting strip surrounding the car, and of course also flexible OLED panels on the dashboard:

The CPI's OLED/OPV prototype line was designed to enable materials companies, device designers and end users to develop their technology within a fully automated, controlled environment. The system supports both small evaporized and soluble OLED materials, and the line uses slot die technology to allow the coating of substrates in a highly repeatable and reproducible manner with a uniform film thickness of under 50 nm.

Cintelliq released a new report (OLED Lighting: products, pricing, capacity, costs and forecasts 2013 - 2022), and they forecast that OLED lighting will grow into a $3 billion market by 2020 - and OLEDs will then be a serious competitor to LED lighting. Cintelliq says that OLED lighting prices are falling fast and will reach €1,000/m² by 2015/2016. This will cause demand (luminaires for the office, retail and hospitality sectors at first) to accelerate.

Cintelliq says that demand will mostly be for rigid and flexible panels. Color and transparent OLEDs will remain a niche even in 2020.

DisplaySearch says that current manufacturing costs for OLED TV panels are almost seven times higher than LCD panels. They estimate the total manufacturing cost of a 55" FHD AMOLED panel to be $2,454 in Q1 2013. The high price is mostly due to low manufacturing yields.

DisplaySearch expects these yields to improve, and cost will fall significantly over the next two years, but it will still be much higher compared to LCDs. In fact they think that in the following year the cost will fall by 36%, and so in Q1 2014 the price of producing the same OLED panel will drop to a little over $1,500, or about 4.8 times the cost of an LCD panel.

Novaled and 4JET Technologies has jointly developed a new laser process called SLAM (Selective Layer Modification) for OLED customization and optimization. SLAM allows defined customization or grey scaling and it can also be used to optimize lighting density and to isolate short circuits.

4JET says that SLAM can be used to create OLED signage solutions with individual logos or patterns. Basically this creates structured OLEDs (like we've seen from Philips, Fraunhofer, UDC and others) after the manufacturing process.

eMagin unveiled the world's brightest full-color OLED microdisplays, the color OLED-XLS series. Those displays offer 1000 nits of luminance, that is four times brighter than "current industry standard".

XGA096 OLED-XL

eMagin are currently offering OLED-XLS displays in sample quantities over their entire product line (VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA and WUXGA). They will continue to produce the "older" OLED-XL displays.

Back in February we heard reports that Samsung Display is considering to construct a 6.5-Gen (1500x1800 mm) LTPS AMOLED fab. Now new reports from Korea say that Samsung indeed decided to go ahead with this new line, which is scheduled to begin operation towards the end of 2013. The monthly production capacity will be somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 substrates.

Samsung's investment in the new line will be around 1.7 trillion Won ($1.5 billion USD), and they will begin ordering equipment in Q3 2013. The new line will produce panels for OLED TVs and mobile devices - we assume not just for mobile phones but also for tablets and perhaps even laptops. This will be the world's largest LTPS line - and an interesting and adventurous undertaking by Samsung.

Digitimes Research says they expect AMOLED handset panel shipments to reach 363 million units in 2015, up 332% from 2011 (110 million units). They expect Samsung and LG to produce 83.7% of the AMOLED market in 2015 (down from 97.7% today).

In 2015, mobile phone panels will account for 88.7% of total AMOLED panel shipments (79.5% of the AMOLED market in terms of value). OLED TV panels will account for 12.4% of the AMOLED market in 2015 in terms of value. Digitimes expects both Samsung and LGD to significantly increase their OLED TV panel output in 2014-2016, and they say the companies will be able to start profiting on OLED TV panels around 2014-2015 as yields increase.