IHS says that demand for OLED materials will rise almost 27% in 2014, to $445 million, up from $350 million in 2013. The market in 2013 grew 49% from 2012.

IHS says that they expect both AUO and Japan Display to start mass producing AMOLED panels in 2014. This means that there will be four major OLED makers in 2014 (AUO, JDI, SDC and LGD) compared to only one in 2012 (SDC). This means that material makers are expected to compete in a more diverse market environment with increased demand and a broader base of customers.

LG slashed the price of their 55" curved OLED TV in the UK from £7,999 to £4,999 (about $8,100). That's a reduction of almost 40%. Now in the UK the TV is actually cheaper than in the US (where it still lists for $8,999). It's highly likely that LG will soon drop the price in the US too, probably to around $6,000.

LG's curved OLED TV was launched in the US in August 2013 for $14,999. A month later the price dropped to $9,999, and in November LG lowered the price again to $8,999. If they'll indeed slash the price again to around $6,000 it means the TV's price dropped 60% in less than half a year!

OSD Displays developed a new high brightness PMOLED targeting the increasing market demand for wearable devices. The new OLED features a luminance of 1,000 nits - which is 10 times brighter than OSD's average OLED module. Such a high brightness OLED offers unparalleled clarity in direct sunlight.

The new OLED has a resolution of 96x16 and a viewing area of 0.78 inches diagonally. OSD says they developed a new structure and used new organic materials in order to achieve such high brightness.

In a few weeks CES 2014 will begin, and this show always brings us many new OLED gadgets. New rumors from Korea suggest that Samsung is set to announce a new tablet at CES with a 10.5" AMOLED display. This follows reports from a few weeks ago from a different Korean site that claimed that Samsung is developing two new tablets that sport AMOLED displays - an 8" one and a 10" one.

So far the only OLED tablet by Samsung was the the 2011 Galaxy Tab 7.7 with its 7.7" Super AMOLED Plus 1280x800 display. According to ETNews, Samsung only sold 500,000 such devices (it was a premium tablet). But this time Samsung will be more aggressive and hopes to sell over 5 million of those new 10.5" tablets. If they manage to pull this off, this tablet wil be followed by 8" and 13" AMOLED tablets.

The Holst Centre published a nice video showing some new flexible OLED demonstrators:

First up are a flexible OLED with an wireless sensor integrated into a fabric and a watch with a flexible OLED. There's also a cool demo that shows how you can iron a flexible OLED on a fabric - the OLED can withstand the high temperature without a problem. They also show how an OLED lighting can be used under water.

Sharp developed a new LCD backlighting unit (BLU) that improves the displays color gamut. The new BLU enables a 90% NTSC color gamut - without sacrificing the brightness. The new BLU is based on a blue LED with new green and blue phosphors. Below you can see an LCD with the new BLU (right) next to a conventional Sharp LCD.

Sharp usually uses a BLU made of blue LED and yellow phosphors, which achieves 72% NTSC color gamut. Some of Sharp's LCD use a blue LED and red and green phosphors to achieve 83% NTSC gamut, but this lowers the brightness by 20%. 

Andy Zhou, an Australian industrial design student from Monash University teamed up with the CSIRO flexible electronics team to produce an interactive OLED luminaire, the Plus Pendant. The lamp is controlled from an Android application via Bluetooth - it can change the movement of the arms and also show lighting sequences.

The lamp uses 36 OLED panels - 45 lm/W panels made by LG Chem. There are 32 rectangular ones and four square ones.

As part of the Horizon 2020 program, the EU published a call for companies to submit OLED lighting research (and innovation) project proposals. The EU will help with "a small contribution". The projects should focus on materials, process and device technology for OLED lighting and will have to provide a demonstrator at the end.

The EU's final aim is to realize OLED devices over larger surfaces, with higher brightness, larger uniformity and longer lifetimes. According to the EU, OLED lighting panels should reach an energy efficacy of over 100 lm/W and a lifetime of a several hundred hours at LT97. The EU are looking for breakthroughs that will enable production costs of 1€/100 lm.

Samsung Display (SDC) was established in 2012 as a merger a merger between Samsung Mobile Display and S-LCD. SDC is the world's largest display maker that produces both LCD and OLED panels for mobile devices and TVs. The company announced a couple of days ago that it integrated its OLED division with the LCD division.

SDC now wants to realize "organic integration" between OLED and LCD divisions. They also integreated their sales and marketing divisions in an effort to simplify display marketing. We know that SDC sees OLED as the leading future display technology (with a great emphasis on flexible displays) so this move may be yet another step towards SDC's transition to OLED technologies.

In August we heard a report from Japan that Taiwan's Hon Hai (Foxconn) is establishing an OLED R&D center in Japan (possibly in partnership with Sharp's Sakai Display Product) with an aim to start AMOLED panel production in 2015. Today Taiwan's OFWeek reports that Hon Hai is developing high resolution OLEDs aimed for mobile phone and tablets with plans to start volume production in 2015.

According to the report, Hon hai will first develop OLED panels with 350 PPI, and will supply them to Chinese mobile phone makers. Then the company will produce high-resolution panels (up to 450 PPI) as they hope to supply OLED panels to Apple.