Panasonic has unveiled a new VR headset prototype during a private demonstration in Japan. The device, which is similar to Oculus' VR headset uses a large AMOLED display that realizes large field of view (viewing angle of 90-degrees) and a fast refresh rate of up to 75 fps.

Panasonic says that the prototype, unlike Oculus Rift's product, can be hooked on the ears like regular glasses (Oculus' headset uses a strap). The company did not disclose any information regarding the commercialization of the new headset.

OLED lighting seems to be getting a lot of attention lately, with designers interested in flexible and soft area lighting and car makers that see the potential for light weight, beautiful and durable lighting solutions. OLED makers increase performance rapidly, we see more and more commercial installations and mass production is approaching.

But the biggest challenge still remains the cost of the panels. LG Chem recently published pricing for their new OLED panels, and this sparked a short debate which drove me to write this post. At first we'll discuss the price of OLEDs vs LED lighting in terms of dollar per kilo-lumens. Then we'll see why this isn't really a good comparison.

During an investor conference call, Universal Display revealed some new details on LG Display's flexible OLED program. According to UDC, LGD's current production capacity in its 4.5-Gen fab is 14,000 monthly substrates, more than double its capacity (6,000 substrates/month) that was reported in the middle of 2014.

LGD indeed said they expect to double their capacity towards the end of 2014, and that's great news. Some of that capacity will go to LG's own flexible products (such as the G Flex 2 and the G Watch R) - and reportedly also to support Apple's Watch which will launch in April.

Merck and FlexEnable (which was spun-off from Plastic Logic just last week to take over all OTFT development) announced a new partnership to develop plastic-based LCD technology. The two companies say that plastic-based LCDs enables conformal (maybe bendable), light and unbreakable LCDs. Those new displays will be based on FlexEnable's OTFT backplanes.

The two companies report that they are in fact already collaborating and have reached an important milestone towards plastic LCDs and have developed a prototype in a very short timeframe. The IPS demonstrate combines the OFTF array with Merck's LC and organic semiconductor materials.

A few days ago, Planar Systems unveiled a 55" transparent OLED prototype, and now we have a video from the ISE 2015 conference showing this new display:

Besides the fact that this display is a Full-HD one, the video does not provide any more information, but it's very nice to see the display in action and hear Planar's explanation of the advantages of OLED technology over LCD technology for transparent displays.

According to Canalys, 4.6 million wearable bands were shipped in 2014. Out of those, 720,000 were Google-powered (mostly Android Wear). Canalys says that the Moto 360 was the clear leader of the Android Wear devices, and LG's G Watch R (with its round flexible OLED display) was more popular than LG's previous square watch.

While Android Wear's numbers aren't stellar, other smartwatch platforms aren't very successful either. Canalys says that Pebble sold a million devices since its launch and Samsung is also "struggling to keep consumers engaged".

Taiwan UMAGE, a fabless OLED developer and supplier, installed a large colorful OLED installation at Taipei's Astronomical Museum. The interactive OLED 7.2 meters wide "wall" uses 800 panels.

UMAGE is developing its own technologies, but it does not produce its OLEDs - and the company did not disclose the producer (they say it is a tier-1 OLED lighting company). The company currently lists a single product - a 356x451 mm OLED panel module that consists of 20 panels (5x4) in six different colors (Red, Green, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Sky-blue). The modules includes an infrared-sensor.

Last month BMW demonstrated a new concept car, the M4 Concept Iconic Lights that featured two new lighting technologies - the laserlight headlights and the OLED based tail lights and rear direction indicators. Today OSRAM announced that BMW uses the company OLEDs (the laserlight is also made by OSRAM).

When showing the car, BMW said that they aim to launch a production model with OLEDs in the "near future". In April 2014 BMW said that the future lighting technology for their automobiles will be OLED, and that BMW expects to start selling cars with OLED lighting within 3 years.

A couple of weeks ago LG display updated that it currently has a monthly capacity of 14,000 substrates at its Gen-8 OLED TV fab. The company announced plans to grow this to 34,000 monthly substrates by the end of the year. In terms of OLED TVs, LG will be able to produce 600,000 panels in 2015 and 1.5 million in 2016.

Now it is reported in Korea that the cost of that capacity expansion is estimated at $915 million. Earlier today it was reported that Samsung Display plans to invest $3.6 billion from 2015 to 2017 in a new OLED Fab to produce small- and medium-size displays.

According to Reuters, Samsung Display plans to invest $3.6 billion in a new OLED fab from 2015-2017, aiming to make small and medium size displays. Samsung did not release any information regarding the type and capacity of this fab.

One option for Samsung it to build another glass-based OLED fab. The company aims to reach OLED-LCD cost parity for small-sized displays towards the end of 2015. If this happens, it's likely that OLED prices will drop below LCD by 2017 (especially if more capacity is added) and thus demand for AMOLED displays for mobile phones and tablets will soar. Samsung increased their 5.5-Gen capacity from 10K substrates per month to 140K/m from 2009 to 2013.