The OLED Lighting Commercialization Alliance (OLCA) was formed a few days ago in Taiwan, with an aim to make Taiwan an important OLED lighting player. The alliance will promote OLED technologies and will include members from materials suppliers to product makers.

The OLCA seems to be led by Taiwan's ITRI. Other members include Merck, RiT Display, WiseChip, Corning, Tongtai Machine & Tool and the TLFEA (Taiwan Lighting Fixture Export Association). ITRI says that more than 60 companies have shown interest in collaborating with OLCA members.

Researchers from the University of Michigan developed metal-free phosphorescent OLED emitters. The idea is that if the emitter molecules cannot vibrate, they cannot release energy and light and so more energy is converted into light. At first they tried creating a stiff lattice (crystalize the emitters) - this achieved 55% light conversion (better than the 25% of regular fluorescent OLEDs, but not as good as the 100% achieved by heavy metal doping).

But this method cannot be adopted for commercial OLEDs easily, and so the second method they tried is to tweaking the organic molecules so that they form structural bonds with a transparent polymer (they attach "like magnets"). This is an easier process, but it achieved only 24% efficiency - similar to a regular fluorescent OLEDs. But they are working on ways to improve this. The important point is that they demonstrated that increasing the intermolecular bonding strength could efficiently suppress the vibrational loss of the phosphorescent light.

eMagin says that they will receive a number of R&D contracts over the next 2 months. The company will share more information when the contracts are officially signed, but they did say that they expect to more than double the brightness of their already ultra-high-brightness (5,000 cd/m²) full-color OLED microdisplays.

These new contracts will significantly increase eMagin's R&D contract revenue beginning in Q3 2014.

DisplaySearch says that manufacturing costs for small-sized AMOLEDs are currently about 10-20% higher than comparable LCDs. A 5" Full-HD AMOLED for example, costs 16% more than a comparable LCD one.

But improvement in production yields will lower the gap - and in fact DisplaySearch sees OLEDs becoming cheaper than LCDs within two years, when AMOLED production yields reach 90%. DisplaySearch also says sees OLED materials cost reductions, which will also reduce prices further.

In March 2014, eMagin received a notification to stop shipments to three customers pending review of a possible wire bonding problem in an OLED microdisplay. Two months later, eMagin updated that the issue was partially solved, and they resumed shipments to one customer.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

Now eMagin reports that they have resumed shipments (with no loss of expected volume) for two of those customers. They also expect to resume shipments to the third customer after their testing showed that the reliability requirements have been met.

EverDisplay Optronics was established in October 2012 in Shanghai, China with plans to become China's first AMOLED producer. Everdisplay is constructing a Gen-4.5 AMOLED fab. Those AMOLEDs will be deposited on an LTPS backplane.

The company's marketing team were kind enough to answer a few questions I had. This is a very short interview (they do not seem like the talkative types) - but this is one company that anyone interested in OLEDs should keep an eye on in the near future. They also sent me the photo you see below, showing their latest HD (720p) AMOLED prototypes. From left to right: 5-inch (293 PPI), 5.5-inch (267 PPI), 6-inch (244 PPI).

Exactly ten years ago, on July 14 2004, I posted the first post on OLED-Info (OSRAM expands display product line with new OLED "Pictiva"). I actually first heard about OLEDs in 1998 or 1999, and launched the web site just for fun - a place to aggregate some OLED news for investors and experiment with Google AdSense. Fun piece of trivia: the web site was called OL-ED back then...

I never imagined that ten years later, this web site will become my main job - and that it'll be read by over 100,000 each month and have over 15,000 newsletter subscribers... Anyway. Happy birthday, OLED-Info! I wonder what will happen in the next 10 years?

LG's Lifeband Touch smart wearable fitness device is now shipping or $149.99 in the US. The Lifeband uses a small touch white PMOLED that can display incoming call and text information, when the band is paired to an iOS or ANdroid device. The Lifeband touch can also be paired with LG's Heart Rate Monitor earphones that measure signals from the inner ear to track heartbeats.

Meanwhile, Samsung reduced the price of the Gear Fit to only $143. At least if we consider the display, the Gear Fit is more exciting - it features a flexible (curved) 1.84" (432x128) Super AMOLED panel

KGI Securities' Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple pushed back the iWatch launch to November (original estimates said late-September or early October). Apple is delayed the iWatch because of complexities in both the hardware and the software. KGI confirms that the iWatch will have a flexible AMOLED display, covered with sapphire glass.

Earlier reports said that LG Display is Apple's exclusive flexible OLED supplier for the iWatch, but later it was speculated that Apple may be interested in making Samsung Display their 2nd flexible OLED supplier. LG Display may not be able to produce enough flexible OLED displays for Apple (which will require 3-5 million 1.5-inch panels each month), and in any case Apple will not want to depend on a single supplier.

Today Seeking Alpha published my article on Universal Display, titled "Universal Display: 20X Jackpot In 2018?". In this article I present the best-case scenario for UDC (and the OLED market) in 2018. I'm trying to estimate what will happen if small/medium capacity continue expanding fast, if OLED TVs become mainstream and if OLED lighting mass production begins.

As I said in the article's introduction - this is mostly aimed for fun, but I think it's not an impossible market forecast for 2018. I even tried to be conservative in some areas (for example I do not take a stable blue PHOLED emitter into account). So if you're a UDC long (or short, or just thinking about an investment, really) - this could be an interesting read.