Merck participated in the Lightopia exhibition last month, and they showed a mock laboratory that displayed new lighting technologies - including three Tabola OLED lighting panels (made by Fraunhofer's COMEDD) and confirmed that the panels use Merck's materials.

This exhibition will be on display at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and will later go on tour to other museums around the world. It also features BlackBody's I.RAIN chandelier, which you can see in the photo below in the background.

Last month Haier and Seiki unveiled new OLED TV prototypes. Haier showed a 55" TV that is only 4 mm thick with a 1.5mm bezel and a built-in stand with a rather unique design. We do not have any information regarding Seiki's prototype, but it was probably 55" in size as well.

The two companies didn't reveal much details regarding their panels. Neither company has the capability to produce such a large AMOLED panel, so when I posted about those TVs, I speculated that they bought the panels from LG Display. Now there are reports from Korea that say that the Chinese companies actually obtained those panels without permission from Korean makers - they simply bought OLED TVs in the open market, took them apart and then reassembled the OLED panels themselves into their own designs.

On Octbober 9th, Samsung launched the world's first device with a flexible OLED display, the Galaxy Round smartphone, with it's curved 5.7" Full-HD flexible Super AMOLED. Today SamMobile reports that Samsung has no plans to release this phone outside of Korea. The company regards it as a "prototype" device and they will only produce limited quantities.

This makes sense because Samsung's flexible OLED capacity is limited. Samsung Display is producing those OLEDs at their 5.5-Gen line, and the monthly capacity is about 8,000 sheets. But it's likely that Samsung also uses this line for R&D work. Combine this with probably not very high yields, and you'll find that the real production capacity is probably quite low. It's also likely that those flexible OLEDs are very expensive currently - the Galaxy Round costs 1,090,000 Won (a little over $1,000) in Korea, it's very expensive.

In 2012 we reported that CPT (Chunghwa Picture Tubes), a Taiwanese LCD and CRT producer, started developing AMOLED panels and established a small-sized pilot line. Today our sources indicate that the company actually started small scale AMOLED production. I don't have a lot of information on CPT's line at this stage.

AIV-BEX also announced that a delegation from the company visited CPT's AMOLED line earlier in October. It seems that the two companies are in talks about a possible technical collaboration. AIV-BEX plans to construct a 4.5-Gen line that uses Oxide-TFT backplanes (CPT is also developing this technology, although the current production line is not using iGZO) and ink-jet printing for the organic material deposition AIV-BEX's line will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 sheets and the plan is to begin production in 2014.

According to our sources, AUO finally started AMOLED mass production in their AFPD subsidiary in Singapore. AFPD has a Gen-4.5 LTPS fab that was converted for AMOLED production. The fab has a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates but it's not clear whether all the lines were converted to AMOLED and how many OLED panels are currently produced there.

AUO 4.4-inch AMOLED prototype

I'm not sure which panels are being produced there at the moment, but it's likely that AUO is producing the panels they have recently unveiled at trade shows - 4.4" 1900x600 (413 PPI) panel, 5" Full-HD (443 PPI) panel and their newest 5" HD720 AMOLED panels. Earlier reports suggested that HTC and Sony are waiting to integrate AUO's AMOLEDs in their mobile devices.

Applied Materials announced three new systems that are used to deposit Metal-Oxide (mostly IGZO) TFTs for both LCD and OLED displays. First up is the AKT-55KS, a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system that handles 8.5-Gen substrates (2.2x2.5 meters). Applied says this system is defect-free and excels at keeping hydrogen out of the CVD).

Applied AKT-55KS

Applied also announced new physical vapor deposition (PVD) deposition systems. They announced two models, the SKT PiVot 25K which handles Gen-6 substrates and the SKT PiVot 55K which handles 8.5-gen substrates. Applied says that their PVD systems use the company's unique tubular cathodes of donor material. Those cathodes rotate using deposition which results in more even deposition.

Do you have a Galaxy S4 or a Galaxy Note 3? Samsung just published a new Android application that targets those devices that have a Full-HD Super AMOLED display. The application simply shows beautiful nature shots by renowned photographers (such as Ashley Vincent, Hougaard Malan, Kwon O Chul and Satoshi Kuribayashi) and also highlights how OLEDs produces accurate colors and a large color gamut.

Sony announced two new high-end camera models today, and both feature an OLED EVF. First up is the A7 which is the world's first full-frame (24.3 mp) mirrorless camera. The A7 sports an XGA (1024x768) OLED EVF and a 3" LCD. This is probably Sony's own 0.5" OLED microdisplay. Other features include Full-HD 60fp video, HDMI output (with support for 4K images). There's a "flagship" model (A7R) that uses a 36.3 mp sensor without a low-pass filter. The A7 will be available in December 2013 for $1,700 (body only), while the A7R will cost $2,300.

The second camera is the RX10, a premium super-zoom camera featuring a large 1-inch sensor (20.2 mp) and a 24-200 fixed lens with a constant f/2.8 aperture. The viewfinder is an SVGA (800x600) OLED EVF.

Last month Ignis Innovation announced that they began producing some 55" OLED TV evaluation samples for display makers to test their MaxLife compensation technology. The company now tells us that the first sample panel arrived at their offices, and they will start fulfilling orders (to display makers and OEMs) in about two weeks.

The company did some initial measurements, and they say that this panel offers the world's lowest power consumption (20% lower than LG and Samsung's current OLED TVs), longest lifetime (a significant boost over existing OLED panels). The panels are highly uniform (much better than the OLED TVs no the market).

Market report company UBI Research says that the flexible OLED market is set to grow quickly - in fact shipments in 2018 will reach 200 million panels, up over 2600% from 2014 (7.5 million panels).

In terms of revenue, the market will grow from $714 million in 2014 to almost $15 billion by 2018. UBI is much more optimistic than IHS which forecasts that the flexible OLED market will reach only $100 million in 2014. Both companies agree though that growth will be fast, and IHS sees the market reaching $4 billion in 2018 and $12 billion by 2020.