March 2015

Samsung and LG agreed to stop the ongoing legal disputes between LG Display and Samsung Display - thus ending a very long court battle that involved technology theft accusation, stolen TVs and even broken washing machines. The two companies ended all current disputes, and agreed to not take new legal actions - and try and settle all issues through dialog.

In past years we've heard of several lawsuits launched by both sides and even accusations of stolen prototype TVs. In 2013 two two Korean arch-rival agreed to resolve their OLED dispute and they even considered cross-licensing patents and dropped all OLED lawsuits against each other, but settlement negotiation failed. Maybe this time they will finally make peace.

Today's personal OLED interview features Dennis McCarthy - a personal friend and a journalist, consultant and OLED evangelist. If you wish to be featured next, contact us here!

What was the last book you read? and the last movie you saw? Book - Hot, Flat and Crowded. Movie - Interstellar.

As some of you know, I've been following OLEDs for over 15 years (OLED-Info itself is over 10 years old) - and the promise of flexible displays has always been there. In fact most people believe this is the true major benefit of OLED displays.

In 2013, both Samsung and LG started to produce flexible AMOLED displays. This was a watershed moment for the OLED industry - but only for people in the know. The production capacity was small, the adoption was limited and most people never heard of the G Flex, the Galaxy Round or the numerous Samsung wearable devices that used flexible OLEDs.

According to Korean site ETNews, Samsung Display decided to re-enter the OLED TV market. The Korean display maker reportedly finds it difficult to make a profit from the competitive LCD business (some reports suggest that SDC aims to split the OLED and LCD business soon).

Interestingly, the reports suggest that Samsung aims to use a WRGB architecture - like LG uses in their own OLED TVs, and unlike the direct-emission used in Samsung's small display and first-generation OLED TVs. The WRGB (white OLED with color filters and four sub pixels) was originally developed at Kodak, and then bought by LG back in 2009.

LG is going to launch their latest wearable device, the premium Watch Urbane, in Korea in a few days. The luxury Android Wear smartwatch will cost 650,000 won - or about $590 USD).

The Watch Urbane comes in a metal body in gold or silver finishes and a leather strap. It uses the same 1.3" 320x320 plastic-based flexible OLED display used in the G Watch R, and the same hardware (1.2 Ghz Snapdragon 400 CPU, 512MB of RAM, 410mAh battery and 4GB of storage).

Earlier this month, Samsung Electronics reported high demand for their Galaxy S6 and its curved-display variant the Galaxy S6 Edge - in fact the GS6 Edge received 5 million orders (from mobile carriers, not final customers).

Now we hear reports from Korea that Samsung Electronics may decide to increase the GS6 Edge output - in fact they may want to triple the planned production, as they think the GS6 Edge may sell as many units as the 'regular' GS6.

The Fraunhofer Institute has been developing bi-directional OLED microdisplays for years, and they now demonstrate their latest prototype that features an SVGA resolution - up from VGA in the previous prototype shown in 2012.

Besides the increased resolution, the new microdisplay also features a higher resolution image sensor and an enhanced color depth. Fraunhofer also integrated more components directly into the microdisplay chip, which will make integration easier.

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

Reading this report, you'll learn all about:

• Transparent OLED properties and advantages
• What are the main challenges towards transparent OLEDs
• What kind of transparent OLED displays are on the market
• The transparent OLED lighting market

The report package also provides:

• Transparent OLED display product listing
• A guide into buying transparent OLEDs
• A list of all transparent OLED lighting companies
• Free updates for a year

Apple is set to start shipping the Watch wearable device in exactly one month (on April 24th)- with its flexible plastic-based AMOLED display produced by LG Display. A report from China claims that Apple has cut the expected monthly production rate by 50% - due to problems with the AMOLED display.

The report suggests that LG Display struggles with production yields, and Apple only accepts around 30-40% of the screens produced by LGD. Apple planned to produce about 2.5-3 million Watch devices each month, and this has been scaled back to 1.25-1.5 million devices.