May 2015

SID announced their display of the year awards toward DisplayWeek 2015, and OLEDs won both awards. The Gold award went to the flexible OLED display used in Samsung's Galaxy Note Edge device (5.59" curved WQXGA panel). The silver award went to LG Display's 65" 4K curved OLED TV panel. AUO's 1.4" circular AMOLED, now in mass production, was honored with the 'best in show' award.

LG Display's 1.3" 320x320 circular flexible plastic OLED (used in the G Watch R) won the display application of the year, silver award.

Researchers from AU Optronics developed an AMOLED display that uses four primary colors (Red, Green, Blue and Yellow). They say that this design is more efficient than an RGB panel by 16%. The AMOLED panel is 4.65" 720p (317 PPI).

RGBY has been used by Sharp for their Quattron LCD displays (Aquos TVs) for a long time. Sharp says that adding another color increases the range of displayable colors (although the content itself does not provide the yellow color information, which means the TVs need to use software processes which results in less accurate colors).

Researchers from Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) and Advanced Film Device developed a 81-inch 8Kx4K OLED display that is built from 36 13.5" flexible OLED panels that have transparent edges on two adjacent sides.

The transparent edges enabled the researchers to connect the tiles seamlessly - to create the world's largest OLED display ever developed.

SamMobile reports that Samsung launched a new 'secret' project code-named Project Valley (or Project V) that is a dual-screen device, probably a foldable phone.

Foldable OLED concept (2013)

We've seen some false reports from SamMobile before, but we've also seen some accurate ones. This one actually makes sense, and isn't really a surprise - Samsung has been promising a foldable phone towards the end of 2015 for almost two years now. Following the success of the GS6 Edge, it's highly likely that Samsung is developing mobile devices with even more innovative designs.

A couple of weeks ago, UBI Research said that OLED lighting panel shipments will grow quickly in coming years - from around $100 million in 2016 to over $2.7 billion in 2020. By 2025, OLED lighting will grab about 10% of the total lighting market.

Today UBI released some more forecasts, this time about the interior lighting market. According to UBI, starting in 2020, OLED lighting will become competitive with LED lighting, and will gain market share. By 2025, OLED will become the dominant interior lighting technology, generating $5.7 billion in revenue. Flexible OLED lighting will take up about 27% of the total OLED interior lighting market.

N-Tech Research (Nanomarkets) released a new OLED lighting report (OLED Lighting 2015-2022). The company acknowledges that OLED lighting still lacks the momentum they expected by now, by they still see the OLED lighting market reaching $1 billion in sales by 2020 and over $2.2 billion by the end of 2022.

N-Tech says that we've seen impressive gains with OLED performance, and they expect to see increased emphasis on efficacy now. But of course the biggest issue with OLED lighting is the cost, and suppliers remain cautious and so the capacity expansion that is needed to lower costs are not here yet.

Yesterday Merck inaugurated a new OLED Application Center (OAC) in Pyeongtaek, Korea. Merck invested over €7 million in the new center, and it hopes it will enable them to increase customer satisfaction and capture a larger share of the market - by shortening their time to market.

The OAC has a range of equipment for OLED evaporation testing and reliability analysis. In the future, it will introduce advanced processes such as inkjet printing. The OAC resides in the same site as Merck's Chemical Application Centre established in 2011. Merck also operates a technology development center in Taiwan - which also focuses on OLEDs.

According to a report from Korea, Samsung is considering developing Quantum-Dot displays (QLEDs) for TV panels that will compete with OLED TVs. Samsung has failed to commercialize large-sized OLEDs using its direct-emission architecture, and reportedly believes it will fair better with quantum-dot displays.

Samsung is already producing LCD TVs enhanced with quantum-dots films that enhance the color gamut - but these aren't QLED TVs. A QLED is similar to an OLED - an emissive display that uses the QDs as light emitting materials.

Last month China's Everdisplay announced it is developing a 8" AMOLED display for the automotive market, and now the company unveiled first prototypes at the CES Asia trade show.

The 8" display features Full-HD resolution, 2 ms response time and a contrast ratio of over 100,000:1. The display operates in a wide temperature range (-40 to 85 Celsius).

IHS says that flexible AMOLED shipments reaching about 25 million displays in 2015, or 11% of the total AMOLED market in 2015. AMOLED shipments will grow to about 400 million in 2019, and flexible OLEDs shipments will grow to over 100 million units - or over 25% of the total AMOLED market.

Device makers are adopting flexible OLEDs in smartphones and wearables, to differentiate their products from those that use rigid displays. Flexible OLEDs are especially useful in mobile devices because they are thinner and lighter - and of course they enable new design options.