A couple of weeks ago BMW unveiled a new Series 7 concept car as part of their BMW Vision Future Luxury design approach. The car includes all sorts of new user and display interfaces such as a projected HUD and a control tablet for rear seat passengers.

Earlier last month BMW said that the future lighting technology for their automobiles will be OLED (BMW expects to start selling cars with OLED lighting within 3 years) - and indeed the new concept 7 series uses OLED taillights. The OLED suppliers is Astron Fiamm (owners of the Blackbody consumer OLED brand).

Knockr is a new (and free) Android application that enables lock-screen gestures. The idea is that you can setup your phone so that a certain gesture opens a specific application. Knockr only works on devices with OLED screens - because it actually does not turns-off the display on the lock screen, it simply turns it black. On an LCD display, there will be a significant battery drain...

As more and more phones adopt OLED displays, we can expect software to take advantage of the OLED features. In the past few weeks we've seen two interesting patents (here and here) that detail innovative ways to save power on OLED displays.

In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco later received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system. Veeco expected a manufacturing ramp to begin in 2014 - hoping to book more than $75 in ALD production systems by the end of the year.

Yesterday Veeco reported their financial results for Q1 2014. While the company had a good quarter (revenues of $91 million, up 24% sequentially) the new OLED business did not perform as good as they expected. In fact, they didn't get the orders they thought they'd get in Q1 2014, which meant that Veeco will pay less for Synos - $25 million less, actually.

In October 2013, Encapsulix announced that a "leading OLED lighting supplier in Europe" placed an order for the M500 ALD deposition system. The deposition system shipped in February 2014 and today Encapsulix updated us that the system was installed successfully - and that the customer is Blackbody (Astron Fiamm Safety).

Blackbody will use the new system to deposit OLED encapsulation for panels used in the residential, commercial, automotive and avionics markets. Encapulix's system can process substrates up to 400x500 mm in size and is well suited for Blackbody's Gen-2 production line. Blackbody will also use this system to develop other coating (not just encapsulation layers).

Japan's Nikkei Asian Review posted yesterday that Samsung Electronics decided to scrap their plans for an OLED TV fab. The company is still facing production yield problems and decided to focus on high quality LCDs for the "time being". Samsung will continue its OLED TV research of course.

This is not really news. Samsung pretty much confirmed this back in January 2014, and the company seems to have decided to let LG take the OLED TV market for the near future. It seems that LG's choice of technology (WRGB and Oxide-TFT) was better than Samsung's (direct emission and LTPS) - but of course it's too early to pick the winning company as next-gen technologies (such as ink-jet printing) are maturing and will hopefully be adopted in the future.

In the past few months, we heard many rumors regarding Samsung's upcoming OLED tablets. It seems that Samsung are getting closer to launching these new tablets, as the new rumors are getting more and more detailed.

The latest report from SamMobile says that Samsung decided to name the OLED tablet lineup the Galaxy Tab S. There will be two display sizes - 8.4" and 10.5", and both will have the same WQXGA (2560x1600) resolution.

China's Changhong launched their first OLED TV, the 55Q1A. This TV uses LG Display's curved 55" panel. It's not clear from the info I saw, but it may feature 4K resolution (although it's seems rather unlikely). In any case, the TV is now shipping in China for 48,888 yuan (about $7,800).

Changhong is now China's second OLED TV maker. Just last month Skyworth launched their own 55" curved OLED TV, the TianChi E980. Skyworth also uses OLED panels supplied by LG Display. It's interesting to see LG Display strategy of supplying OLED panels to other companies beside LG Electronics.

Last month Amazon slashed the price of LG's curved 55" OLED TV to $5,999, and today the retailer lists the OLED TV for only $4,726. This is via Beach Audio, the original Amazon page still lists the TV at $5,999.

You can also buy this TV at a much lower price at eBay - there's one seller offering the OLED TV for $3,999 and one for $4,200. That's far below LG's original price in august 2013 ($14,999)!

There are reports that Apple acquired private stealth company LuxVue Technology. LuxVue is developing a micro-LED based display. The company raised $43 million in VC money.

There's very little information available about LuxVue or its technology. And obviously we don't know anything about Apple's plans for this technology.

Japan Display's OLED R&D manager Masahiko Suzuki discussed the company's AMOLED program during a conference in Japan. Masahiko explains (see slide below) that for the medium-term, the small/medium display maker is focused on high-res LCD panels (over 500 PPI), but for the long term the main focus will be on OLED displays.

JDI sees OLED as a way to create a new market for flexible, transparent and roll-to-roll printed displays. JDI is set to develop flexible OLEDs and later on high-resolution OLEDs. JDI is using LG's WRGB technology which enables them to achieve a high resolution and a lower power consumption on mainly-white images (such as a web browser). But currently JDI sees OLEDs as still too expensive, and there are still issues with lifetime and uniformity.