The LED Tech Talk show hosted Dietmar Thomas, Philips' OLED communication and brand manager (and also my personal friend). Philips talks about the company's current OLED lighting offering and their expectations for the near future.

Dietmar actually says that OLEDs are ready for the general lighting market - and by general lighting he means stuff like emergency exit signs, signage in general and under-the-shelf lighting. Philips also sees OLEDs enter the residential lighting market, but this will only happen in 2017 or so.

Printed electronics developer Plextronics filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company has a debt of $33 million, and wasn't able to find a buyer or an investor. The company plans to put itself up for auction and has an opening offer from Solvay (who offers $24 million to extinguish debt and $8.5 in cash).

Plextronics was /developing materials for printed electronics devices - mostly OLEDs and OPVs. The company offers HIL and HTL OLED stack materials and printable electrodes. The company's investors include Solvay, Samsung and Universal Display.

Sharp was showing their 7" MEMS displays at CES 2014, promising MEMS based tablets on the market within six months. Those same prototypes were unveiled a few months ago at Ceatec 2013 in Japan. MEMS-Shutter displays are similar to LCD in that they have a LED backlighting unit (BLU), color filters, and a component that blocks the light. But instead of liquid-crystals and polarizers, these displays use MEMS shutters.

Sharp's 7" prototypes feature a resolution of 1280x768 and are made on IGZO substrates. Sharp claims that MEMS displays will feature ultra-low power consumption but will yet offer excellent image quality and color - in fact Sharp says the color gamut is better compared to 'standard' LCDs. Sharp sees these displays competing with OLEDs, but they will be a lot cheaper.

During CES, both Samsung and LG introduced bendable TVs. LG showed a 77" bendable OLEDs, while Samsung showed 55" bendable OLEDs and a 85" bendable LCD.

Samsung 85-inch bendable LCD

DisplaySearch posts that they were surprised at first to see a bendable LCD as they expected such designs to be achievable with OLEDs only. According to DisplaySearch, only the LCD panel is bendable in Samsung's prototype. The backlight remains flat in Samsung's TV. This can create lighting non uniformity. There are some solutions, but it seems that one drawback is that the TV can only be used in two modes - flat or curved. You cannot choose your own curvature.

The Holst Centre purchased a Kurt J. Lesker Super Spectros thermal evaporator, which expands the centre's OLED sheet-to-sheet production facilities. The new tool will increase throughput for hybrid solution-processed / evaporated OLEDs, speeding up testing of new process steps and materials.

The Holst Centre says that in the future, high volume OLED production is likely to use roll-to-roll processes, but in sheet-to-sheet processes provide an an important intermediate step. The centre will use the new Super Spectros thermal evaporator for depositing the light-emitting and charge-transport layers of small-molecule OLED devices.

Samsung announced that they shipped over 10 million Galaxy Note smartphones in South Korea alone since launching the original Galaxy Note in 2011. A month ago the company announced that they shipped over 10 million Note 3 smartphones globally in little over 2 months, and they also shipped over 38 million Galaxy Note and Note 2 smartphones globally since launching the original Galaxy Note in 2011

All of Samsung's Galaxy Note models use large HD Super AMOLED displays. The original Note had a 5.3" 1280x800 OLED, the Note 2 had a 5.5" OLED display (1280x720, non-Pentile) and the latest Note 3 sports a 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI, PenTile).

According to a report from Korea, LG sold over 13,000 G Flex smartphones in Korea. LG wants to lead the flexible OLED smartphone market, and is now launching this phone in the US and in Europe.

If you're thinking of buying this phone, know that some consumers are complaining about "bumps" in the display. LG acknowledges this issue, saying that excessive or frequent force that flattens the device may produce such bumps indeed. According to LG it does not effect the performance and quality of the phone, and the bumps will disappear over time and immediately disappears after pressing the problematic spot on the glass cover.

Market research firm iSuppli expects the OLED TV market to grow quickly in coming years. 2014 will still be a slow year with only 50,000 sets sold globally (most of them will be made by LG), but this will quickly grow to 700,000 in 2015, 2.2 million in 2016 and 5.1 million in 2017. In 2018, over 10 million OLED TVs will ship.

iSuppli came back from CES with the conclusion that while there are still challenges, it seems that TV makers are committed to promote OLED technologies. They expect the technical issues to be overcome and high-volume production will begin soon.

LG's G Flex is finally coming to the US. Sprint will ship the flexible OLED smartphone on January 31st (it will be available in retail stores on February 7th). You can now pre-order the G Flex for $300 (with a two-year contract).

The G Flex has a 6" 720p RGB flexible OLED display made by LG Display that is curved from top to bottom (unlike Samsung's Galaxy Round which is curved from left to right). Other features include a 2.3Ghz Snapdragon S800 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, a 13MP camera, NFC, Android 4.2.2 and a 3500mAh non-removable battery (LG Chem's curved battery). The G Flex has two rear-mounted buttons and a "self-healing" back (that will heal scratches quickly).

The 3-year German project IMAGE (innovation printable electrode materials for high performance OLEDs and OPVs) has been successfully completed. The project partners (which include Fraunhofer COMEDD and Carnot MIB) demonstrated novel organic transparent electrodes, which are arranged on a backing film and enable flexible electronic components.

The performance of these electrodes was demonstrated using flexible OLEDs and OPVs. COMEDD explains that new electrodes could replace conventional transparent metal oxides, such as ITO - which is less cost effective and less flexible. COMEDD can now manufacture flexible organic devices using the new electrodes, and the project partners are looking for industry partners to commercialize this technology.