In June 2012 we first heard about AIV-BEX's ambitious AMOLED project. Later in 2013 we posted more details about this 4.5-Gen Oxide-TFT AMOLED production fab project. A few months ago I heard that AIV-BEX abandoned the OLED project, but according to some new information this is not true, although they do face some delays to their original plan.

In 2013 AIV-BEX planned to start production in 2014, but now according to the OLED Association, this was delayed to Q4 2015. According to a private investor on a forum, the company assured him that the project is still running but is slower than expected.

In early 2014, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". Soluble OLED processes should offer a great production cost reduction - but Mitsubishi's panel suffered from limited lifetime (15,000 hours).

According to a new report from Japan, Mitsubishi managed to double the lifetime, and their newest panels offer 30,000 hours. This was achieved by new longer-lasing OLED materials and a different device structure. Mitsubishi already shipped panel samples to lighting equipment makers and will setup up their marketing effort soon via their Pioneer JV (MC Pioneer OLED Lighting).

Back in July, there was a report from Korea stating that Samsung Display's CEO wants to expand OLED sales into the Chinese market in a move to diversity and expand the company's OLED customer base. Following Samsung Electronics relatively weak smartphone sales, this is not surprising.

Now there are reports from Chinese media stating that SDC is indeed talking with Chinese smartphone brands for OLED supply deals. According to those reports, Huawei and OPPO are interested in those displays and we should expect AMOLED smartphones from those two companies soon.

There's a new pop-up restaurant called Tincan in London's Soho that offers gourmet tinned seafood dishes. The interesting small restaurant (designed by AL_A architects) uses OLED lighting panels as the main lighting (in addition to some LED down-lights in the bar).

Tincan uses 16 circular OLED lighting panels produced by LG Chem. The designers found that because the OLEDs emit no heat, they can use simple 3D printing materials to build the prototype designs (actual end products were made with aluminum spinning method).

A couple of months ago I posted an article about OLED monitors and laptop displays in which I discussed why there isn't any such product on the market yet. Today the Korea Times reports that Samsung Display will today unveil new 14" OLED panels at the IMID 2014 tradeshow in Korea.

If this report is correct, this is very interesting - as it probably means that Samsung Electronics is finally developing a laptop device with an OLED display. This could also be used in a large tablet (perhaps with a keyboard attachment) or a laptop/tablet hybrid device. We'll probably know more later when we have a real report from IMID.

In April 2009, Philips started offering OLED lighting panel samples (and was the first company to do so). For over 5 years, Philips shipped many types of OLEDs, but they were still considered a technical gadget. The panels were offered via a special Lumiblade online shop.

Today Philips told me that OLED is now an official "product" of Philips. The lumiblade shop is closed, and the OLED panels will be available via the normal Philips OEM shops. Currently this only so in Europe, but this will soon be true globally. Philips says that "OLED sample time is over" - OLEDs have matured enough to become a real lighting product.

In July eMagin announced they expect to receive a number of new R&D contracts, and now the company announced three new R&D project wins, worth a total of $6.8 million.

The first project is a $1.1 million contract over 15 months to further enhance the brightness of eMagin's ultra-high-brightness full-color microdisplay. The second project ($4.9 million, 30 months) and the third ($800,000 over 11 months) involved a new manufacturing technology that eMagin will detail in the near future.

Nippon Electric Glass (NEG) developed the world's thinnest glass plate (only 30 um thick). The G-Leaf glass can be used as a substrate for flexible OLED displays, and NEG demonstrated a flexible OLED that is only 90 um thick (sandwiched between two G-Leaf sheets).

NEG uses their "overflow method" technology to manufacture the new glass plates. Reportedly the glass feels like a plastic film and does not break even when crumpled (see photo below).

In the past two years, Evonik and the Holst Centre has been developing a new soluble Oxide-TFT material and a slot-die coating deposition process. Evonik is now commercializing the so-called iXsenic S material. In fact Evonik says that a key customer is introducing the product in a mass production display fab (it is unknown if this line produces OLED or LCD displays).

Evonik says that their new material offers a performance good enough for high-resolution OLED and LCD displays, and it can be deposited in a coating process which lowers production costs.

China-based Lonshine Technologies is developing new analog -smartwatch products that use a transparent OLED over a mechanical watch. There are two devices, the Halo 1 (a smartphone companion) and the Halo 2 (which includes 2G wireless and can work without a companion phone).

Both devices use the same transparent PMOLED that features a resolution of 96x96 and can display up to 256 colors. The watches are powered by an Intel XMM 2231 ARM chip (300Mhz), Android 2.3, 512 MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. There's a 240 mAh battery (a 3150 mAh one on the Halo 2) that should last for three days.