February 2014

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q4 2013. Revenues were $49.5 million (including $20 million in license fees from SDC). Total 2013 revenues were $146.6 million (up 75% from 2012). UDC ended 2013 with $273 million in cash, up from $244 in the end of 2012.

UDC also issued a guidance for 2014 - $190 to $205 million. SDC's royalty fees will be $50 million in 2014 (up from $40 in 2013). They expect most of the growth from 2013 to be in the second half of the year - due to capacity increase at SDC and LGD's Gen-8 OLED TV fab.

In October 2013, Encapsulix announced that a "leading OLED lighting supplier in Europe" placed an order for the M500 ALD deposition system. Today Encapsulix announced that the Gen-2.5 deposition system was shipped.

Encapsulix's system will be used to deposit the encapsulation layer for OLED lighting devices, in applications such as residential, commercial, automotive, and avionics markets. Encapsulix says that their system will feature better barrier properties, device lifetime and cost of ownership than the technology currently in use.

A few weeks ago I posted about Plastic Logic's OTFT-based AMOLED demonstration. While the company's current demo is a simple display (monochrome white), it seems that Plastic Logic believes that OTFT technology is now reaching a performance level for adoption in AMOLED displays.

I discussed this with Mike Banach, Plastic Logic's Research Director. Mike (and the rest of the team at PL too, of course) says that organic semiconducting materials have reached a "tipping point" in electrical performance that makes them viable to drive flexible OLED displays. Couple this with the industrial and flexibility benefits of using solution-based organic materials makes it a compelling technology option for display makers looking to establish a position in the flexible display market.

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S5, some people (yes, including me) were a bit disappointing by the display. It seems that it's basically the display used in the GS4, only slightly larger (5.1" vs 4.99"). But it turns out that Samsung does include a couple of new display related technologies in the GS5.

According to PC Magazine, the GS5 includes a custom image chip that dynamically adjusts the color gamut and contrast based on ambient light. This makes the colors much better under different lighting conditions. And it's bound to make DisplayMate's Raymond Soneira really happy - he's been long talking about how OLED's wide color gamut can be used in ambient light conditions to improve the image quality.

Samsung announced that it has sold over 200 million Galaxy S smartphones - including the GS1, GS2, GS3 and GS4. It probably also includes all the variants (such as the GS4 zoom and the GS4 mini). Virtually all of those phones use Super AMOLED displays.

In January 2013, Samsung said it sold 100 million Galaxy S devices. This means that it took them a little over a year to sell 100 million more. In 2013, by the way, the company produced over 200 million AMOLED panels. This means that the company's most popular phones actually account to less then 50% of SDC's OLED production. The rest are mostly used in other Samsung phones (like the Galaxy Notes family), phones for other companies (such as Nokia and Motorola) and digital cameras. Of course it's likely that inventory buffers also account for several of those million OLED panels...

Yesterday Samsung announced their 2nd flexible OLED device, the Gear Fit smart fitness band. The display is a curved flexible OLED - 1.84", 432x128 Super AMOLED. This seems to be the most advanced display on a fitness band, as most others opt for PMOLED panels.

The Gear Fit includes four fitness monitors (pedometer, exercise, heart rate, and sleep) enabled by three sensors (accelerometer, gyro and hear rate) and can also show mobile phone notifications (messages, e-mails, calls, etc.). Personally this seems to be a much more attractive device than Samsung's own Gear smart watches. It's great to see Samsung adopting flexible OLEDs in more devices, that actually benefit from a thin, light and curved display.

Yesterday Samsung unveiled their latest Galaxy S series smartphone, the Galaxy S5. Samsung says that the new phone was designed to "focus on what matters most to consumers". The display is a 5.1" FHD (432 PPI) Super AMOLED display (seems to be the same display as on the GS4, only a bit larger).

Other features of the GS5 include a 2.5 Ghz quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16MP camera (4K video support). The GS5 is dust and water resistant, and it packs a finger scanner and a heart rate sensor. The new flagship device will launch on April 11 in 150 countries worldwide.

Russia based YotaPhone launched the world's first hybrid E Ink / LCD mobile phone Europe only a few months ago, but the company already revealed a new 2nd-gen prototype phone. The main upgrade is the added touch capability on the 4.7" E Ink display, which enables it to be used for messaging, e-mails, browsing and more.

But I was also happy to hear that the 4.3" 720p LCD has been replaced by a larger AMOLED display. In fact, the new yotaPhone uses the same 5" Full-HD Super AMOLED display used in Samsung's Galaxy S4.

Update: just after posting my article, Samsung annonced the Gear Fit, a fitness band with a 1.84" Super AMOLED panel. Perhaps my reasoning was all wrong, and high-resolution, color displays may take over this new market as well.

Passive Matrix OLEDs (PMOLEDs) use a simple driver, which restricts the resolution and efficiency of the display, but also enables it to be produced easily and relatively on the cheap. The first OLED displays on the market (in 1998) were PMOLED, made by Pioneer, used in car audio systems.

The PMOLED market grew in the past, up until 2006. Back then, the main application for those displays was the sub-display on clamshell phones. But then Apple launched the iPhone, and since then the clamshell design lost its popularity very quickly - and the PMOLED market is in decline ever since.

Bloomberg reports that HTC is developing three new wearable devices. The company will demonstrate the first one at the MWC event later this week, but will only show the watch privately to mobile carriers. The first watch will be based on Qualcomm's Toq device - which uses a small touch Mirasol display.

The second watch wil be based on Google's Now service, and this one will use an AMOLED display. The third wearable device will be an electronic bracelet. That's all we currently know. According to Bloomberg the information comes from a person with "direct knowledge of the plans".