Shanghai EverDisplay, Shanghai Tianma, Yurui Chemical and YShanghai University and more parties formed a new OLED industry alliance. It's not clear what the alliance's charter is, but apparently the Jinshan district in Shanghai aims to become an OLED production hub.

Everdisplay plans to start mass producing AMOLED panels towards the end of 2014. Everdisplay is building a 4.5-Gen AMOLED fab with a monthly capacity of 15,000 substrates. The company aims to be the first AMOLED maker in China.

Samsung Display and LG Display had been fighting over display patents for a long time - with lawsuits launched by both sides and even accusations of stolen prototype TVs. In February 2013 the two companies agreed to resolve their OLED dispute and they even considered cross-licensing patents. Later in September 2013, they dropped all OLED lawsuits against each other in a reconciliatory gesture.

But the latest report from Korea is that the LG and SDC failed to negotiate a settlement. SDC wants to reach a patent cross-licensing deal, but LG is not interested. I think this may be because LG believes its WRGB technology is superior (and indeed they are much more advanced in their OLED TV efforts) - and perhaps Samsung is interested in adopting this technology for their OLED TVs as well.

In January 2014, Sharp unveiled 7" WXGA MEMS-based displays, promising to release them within six months. Last week during the SID conference, Sharp unveiled new prototypes, saying that they will start shipping those displays in Q4 2014 (yes, still half a year away).

Sharp's display use an IGZO backplane and MEMS technology developed by Pixtronix (a subsidiary of Qualcomm). The 7" 1280x800 panels offer a color depth of 24 bits and a 122% NTSC color gamut. Sharp says that this display is very power efficient - with full color it consumes less than half the power an an LCD panel. A monochrome display will use 1/10 of the power used by an LCD.

As we reported back in February, SEL and sharp unveiled a 13.3" 8K OLED prototype. This ultra high density (664 PPI!) display uses SEL's C-axis-aligned crystalline oxide semiconductor (CAAC-OS) backplane.

SEL's previous 13" CAAC-OS OLED prototype featured 326 PPI. But that lower-resolution panel was flexible. This new panel uses white OLEDs with color filters. SEL adopted micro cavities to narrow the wavelengths. The display features a 84% NTSC color gamut (rather low for an OLED). Each OLED pixel is driven by five transistors and one capacitor (5T+C) - there are almost 500 million pixel transistors in this display.

Update: that panel was actually produced by BOE themselves, at the company's Gen-8 AMOLED pilot line in Hefei

It turns out that BOE had a 55" UHD (3840x2160) WRGB OLED TV prototype on display at SID 2014. The TV features a contrast ratio of over 100,000:1, a color gamut over 85%, a response time of 0.2 ms and a brightness of 120-400 nits. The whole TV is less than 5 mm thick.

It seems likely that BOE is using a 55" 4K panel made by LGD. After all we know that LG already launched such 4K OLEDs in Korea, and the Korean company is happy to offer its panels to other makers (including Changhong, Skyworth and perhaps even Sony and Panasonic).

Last week AU Optronics showed several AMOLED prototypes at SID 2014, and now we got some photos of all those displays (thanks Sri!). So first up is the flexible 5" 720p panel. This panel uses a plastic substrate and uses a thin film encapsulation. The minimum bending radius is less than 1 cm.

Next up is a "normal" rigid panel. This one is 5.7" in size with a resolution of 1440x2560 (WQHD). This high-density (517 PPI) features a color gamut of 100% NTSC, a contrast ratio of over 100,000:1, a brightness of 300 cd/m² and a response time of less than 0.01 ms.

When LG launched their OLED TV in August 2013, the price was set at $14,999. The price was repeatedly slashed, and only last month we spotted it on Amazon.com for $4,726. Today Amazon lists LG's OLED TV for only $3,999! That's quite a fast price drop, in less than a year!

LG also lowered the price of their flat 55" FHD TV, the 55EA8800 (GALLERY OLED) - to $4,499. Again I'm going to speculate that LG are trying to sell all those FHD panels, and start shipping those 4K OLEDs they already launched in Korea.

On March 2014, Konica Minolta announced it developed the world's most efficient OLED lighting panel - at 131 lm/W. Only two months later, the Japanese company announced it developed an even more efficient panel at 139 lm/W.

Konica's new panel has an emitting area of 15 square centimeters, a lifetime of 55,000 hours (LT50) at a brightness of 1,000 cd/m² and a CRI of 81. The color temperature is 2857K.

Sony announced a new 0.23" 640x400 (nHD+) OLED microdisplay aimed for wearable devices. The microdisplay features a pixel pitch of 7.8um and a 110% NTSC color gamut. Sony aims to ship this display in 2015.

Sony says that the new microdisplay, while being smaller (and with a lower resolution) compared to their current 0.5" product, it offers a higher performance. The contrast ratio has been improved from 10,000:1 to 100,000:1, the brightness enhanced from 200 to 800 cd/m² and the power consumption has been slashed from 400 to 140 mW. The viewing angle has also been improved.

Back in December 2012, rumors started to circulate about an upcoming Apple smartwatch called the iWatch. Since then we had countless reports about this wearable device. The latest report from Japan's Nikkei Asian Review claims that Apple decided to launch the iWatch in October 2014. The new device will run on Apple's newly announced iOS 8, and will monitor health-related data, such as calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood glucose and blood oxygen levels. It will also show notifications from your iPhone of course.

Apple 2011 flexible OLED watch patent

According to the Nikkei, the iWatch will have a curved OLED display (earlier reports suggested that LG Display will be the exclusive supplier). Apple is apparently very confident in this new product, and it plans to produce about 3 to 5 million units per month.