Samsung Display and LG Display announced they dropped all OLED lawsuits against each other in a reconciliatory gesture. The companies agreed to "put aside their differences" and look for ways to cooperate.

Samsung and LG's OLED technology feud was a long time standing and it's great to hear the two Korean giants agreed to resolve it and perhaps even cooperate. Back in February, LG and Samsung agreed to resolve their OLED dispute outside of the court of law and SDC's CEO even said the two companies are considering cross-licensing patents. Later on it was reported that the South Korean police searched the offices of Samsung Display as part of the investigation into alleged large-sized OLED TV technology theft from LG Display, but hopefully now this truce will hold.

Philips hosted an OLED lighting webinar on August 31. Ingolf Sischka, Philips' OLED Product & Marketing Manager explained about OLED lighting, its advantages compared to other lighting technologies and Philips' current and future offerings. Towards the end of his presentation (27:45), he discusses what's to be expected from Philips in 2014, and he details the upcoming 3rd-gen GL350 panel that will be unveiled towards the end of 2013.

The Gen 2 panel offered 200 lumens and 45 lm/W. The new upcoming panel will feature 300 lumens and 55 lm/W - so it will be brighter and more efficient (this is an estimate and not final specifications yet, though). The GL350 Gen-2 is now in production, and I'm guessing that the Gen-3 will enter production sometimes towards the end of 2014.

A couple of days ago we reported that Veeco acquired Synos Technology who designs and manufactures FAST-ALD encapsulation technology for flexible OLED displays. Veeco said that Synos' first pilot production system has been installed and the manufacturing ramp is currently expected to begin in 2014.

Now financial services firm Wedbush released a new report on this deal and they say they believe that Synos has been working with an industry leader - specifically Samsung since 2011. According to Wedbush, Synos expected the product shipment to start in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014. We know that Veeco paid $70 million plus $115 if certain milestons are reached - and it makes sense that if Samsung adopts Synos' technology it will make it much more lucrative for Veeco.

OSD Displays now offers transparent PMOLED panels. The company offers either small monochrome dot-matrix displays (0.56" - 1.54" active area) with a transmittance of 70% or segmented displays which are larger (up to 3") and with a transmittance of 45%.

The company currently offers only custom panels (i.e. with a setup cost) and later on they will offer standard panels as well.

Veeco announced that is it going to acquire privately held Synos Technology who designs and manufactures Fast Array Scanning Atomic Layer Deposition systems (FAST-ALD) for flexible OLED displays. Veeco will pay an initial $70 million, and according to performance milestones, the total deal may grow to $185 million.

Veeco says that they believe Synos' technology will remove the barrier to adoption of flexible OLED displays. Synos' first pilot production system has been installed and the manufacturing ramp is currently expected to begin in 2014. Veeco says that in the future they also see FAST-ALD used in OLED TV, lighting, solar, batteries and other large adjacent markets.

DisplaySearch says that OLED TV panels production costs are still very high, but this will not deter investments and the company forecasts rapid expansion in AMOLED capacity, as can be seen in the chart below (in which the yellow bars show AMOLED capacity while the green bar is capacity that can be used for either LCD or AMOLED production):

According to this chart dedicated AMOLED fab capacity grew from less than a million square meters in 2011 to almost four million square meters in 2013. In 2017, dedicated AMOLED capacity will reach 14 million square meters (i.e. 28 times as much capacity as in 2011).

According to the OLED Association, Panasonic said that they are progressing fast enough to launch the 55" (probably 56") UHD OLED TV in Q4 2013. Panasonic will start mass production in its Himeji Pilot Gen-5.5 line (which means initial production will be very limited). If this report is true it means a real acceleration as Panasonic previously said they will only be ready in 2015 (although you may say that the current Himeji line will not be real mass production in any case).

Panasonic OLED TV prototype, IFA 2013

Panasonic's OLED TV panel, unveiled in January 2013, is produced using ink-jet printing and uses an RGB subpixel matrix (direct-emission). Panasonic is using Sumitomo's PLED materials, and AUO's oxide-TFT Substrates. The company is collaborating with Sony on OLED technologies.

Frost & Sullivan posted a new analysis (as part of their Technical Insight research) regarding medium and large-area OLED panels. They forecast that further technology development and new manufacturing techniques will reduce OLED panels prices to a level suitable for mass production by the end of 2014.

In fact, F&S say that this will enable OLEDs to enter the TV, tablet and laptop markets. Looking even further into the future, flexible OLEDs will promise newer applications as well.

US Carrier T-Mobile announced they are accepting pre-orders for the Galaxy Note 3. The new "phablet" costs $199 (with a 2-year plan) and will be available on October 2nd - together with the $299 Galaxy Gear. Meanwhile AT&T is now accepting pre-orders for the Galaxy Gear. 

The Galaxy Note 3 sports a 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI), a 2.3 Quad-Core CPU (or a 1.9 Ghz octa-core in some markets), 3 GB of RAM, 32/64GB of storage, a 13 MP camera (will be capable of 4K videos in some markets) and Android 4.3. Samsung managed to pack all this in a phone that is smaller and lighter than the Note 2.

In December 2012, LG's Global OLED Technology (GOT) filed a lawsuit against Eastman Kodak, claiming that 18 of Kodak's patent actually belong to GOT. Kodak said these aren't related to OLEDs and so were not part of the 2009 deal (when GOT bought about 2,200 OLED patents and patent applications from Kodak). GOT also wanted to recover royalty payments from Pioneer that were paid to Kodak and not GOT (he Pioneer license was supposed to have been transferred to GOT but apparently Kodak wasn't able to obtain consent for the transfer).

Today GOT reported that the US court ordered Kodak to assign ownership of 3 patents to GOT (US patents #6,717,560, #6,892,014 and #6,999,138). This was a settlement agreed to by GOT and Kodak. Kodak will also assign the Pioneer license agreement to GOT, including all rights to receive royalty payments from Pioneer under the license.