Next month it's going to be one year since LG launched their curved OLED TV in the US (for $14,999). LG kept lowering the price of this TV, and today I found out that it is being sold on Amazon.com for $3,299. That's an almost 80% price drop in less than a year!

In fact, LG's OLED TV now costs less than Samsung's curved 4K LED-LCD TV, the UN55HU9000 (which sells on Amazon today for $3,497). So now you can choose - a sharper curved 4K LCD or a FHD OLED with its infinite contrast, better colors and slimmer design.

OLEDNet posted an interesting article saying that Gionee's upcoming GN9005 ultra-slim smartphone uses a 4.8" HD AMOLED Panel (306 PPI) made by AU Optronics. OLEDNet says that the fact that this panel is called "AMOLED" and not "Super AMOLED" like SDC's panels is a hint, and in addition, it is a low-performance panel compared to the SDC-made 5" FHD 441 PPI panel Gionee used in their previous phone (the Elife S5.5).

I'm not sure I'm convinced - this panel could still be made by SDC, even if it does not specifically use the Super AMOLED brand (this is up to Gionee I believe to decide). But OLEDNet says that according to their information, AUO started supplying AMOLED Panels to a Chinese maker last month.

Market research company TechSci released a new report in which they forecast fast growth (41% CAGR) in the next five years for the global pico projector market. Currently most pico projectors used DLP and LCoS microdisplays, but in the future laser-based projectors will be common, and in addition OLED technology will also play a "significant role" in revolutionizing the pico projector market over the next five years.

This is really interesting. While OLEDs for pico projectors were discussed in the past, the only real activity we're aware towards such a solution was a EU projector called HYPOLED back in 2008. That project, led by the Fraunhofer Institute, developed a VGA full-color OLED microdisplay coupled with pico-projector optics. Originally MED supplied the microdisplays, but the company went bankcrupt and they continued the work with MicroOLED.

In April 2014 TCL announced that their CSOT subsidiary will invest 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) to build a 6-Gen display fab that will be used to produce small/medium AMOLED displays. Now digitimes reports that CSOT, with support from the government of Wuhan, China, already begun trial production of AMOLED panels, and the company expects to start mass production by 2016.

It doesn't seem likely that CSOT, went from an investment plan to trial production in less than 3 months, but honestly these reports from China are not very clear. I hear it's more likely that CSOT has a pilot 4.5-Gen AMOLED line, in which they started the trial production.

A couple of weeks ago we published an interview with EverDisplay's marketing team. During the interview, they said that they have started to approach customers with AMOLED samples. Today EDO officially announced, that after two years of effort, the company shipped their first samples to customers.

It turns out that EDO first produced 5" HD (720p) AMOLED displays (in the interview they said they also developed 5.5" and 6" HD panels). Those panels were shipped to Chinese mobile phone makers. EDO now says they have successfully entered the "mass production stage".

IDTechEx released a new flexible OLED display market report, in which they say that the next evolution of OLED displays is plastic and flexible displays. They see fast growth in such displays, with sales reaching $16 billion by 2017. The first flagship flexible display will ship in 2017.

Not all OLEDs will be plastic-based, and this will especially be true for TV applications. In fact, IDTechEx sees OLED TVs also growing very quickly - with a projected 42% CAGR in the next ten years (this will be the second fastest growing OLED application after automotives).

LG Display reported their financial results for Q2 2014, with a 7% increase in revenue over Q1 2014 (but a 9% decline from Q2 2013) and a net profit of $250 million (up from a loss in Q1 and a profit of $100 million in Q2 2013). But of course I'm more interested in LG's future OLED development efforts.

In their press release, LGD says that they will "continue to make efforts to generate mid- and long-term profits by building on its OLED TV leadership... and further developing differentiated small and mid-size products including plastic OLEDs".

OLEDNet posted an article stating that major equipment companies in Korea reported orders from Samsung Display (SDC). The manufacturing process equipment suggest that SDC is finally moving forward with its Gen-6 (1850x1500) AMOLED fab.

According to the report, SDC plans to complete the orders soon and wants to get it all by December 2014 and start mass producing in Q1 2015. The only major equipment orders left are for the encapsulation equipment. These may go to Veeco for their FAST-ALD systems, but we know that SDC is also looking at alternative approaches.

Two weeks ago LG announced it has developed 18" rollable OLEDs and 18" transparent OLEDs, showing photos of two prototypes. LG now quietly released videos showing those amazing new displays, the largest ever flexible and transparent OLEDs.

The flexible OLED has of 1200x810 (80 PPI), and a curvature radius of 30R. As you can see it really can be rolled up (to a radius of 3 cm). We don't have a lot of technical details on the transparent panel, besides the fact that its transmittance is 30%.

I'm happy to announce our third OLED market report, the Flexible OLED Market Report. This report provides a great introduction to flexible OLED panels, both display and lighting ones. It covers everything you need to know about flexible panels technologies. This is a great guide for anyone interested in flexible panels for their own devices, and also for technology and system suppliers.

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• The different kinds of flexible OLEDs
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• Flexible OLED display product concepts and prototypes
• An overview of the OLED display market
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