July 2015

Audi announced that it will bring a new concept car to the Frankfurt motor show in September - and this concept will feature OLED lighting tail lights. As always, Audi says that OLED provides a thin, efficient and low-heat light source, while achieving a new level of homogeneity while opening new design possibilities.

Audi calls this new design 'Matrix OLED technology". From the prototype photo above, it seems that they will use transparent red OLEDs placed one on top of the other. Then again this may be just a design sketch, we'll have to wait for September to know for sure.

Back in May 2014, Apple acquired LuxVue Technology, a private company that develops micro-LED based displays. Very little was known about this company and its technology, but since then interest in micro-LED displays is obviously higher.

Candice Brown-Elliott, the creator of the Pentile Matrix technology (and the CEO of Nuovoyance), says that micro-LED has the potential to be truly disruptive. While it's still in an early stage, and using it to create large display is very challenging, a micro-LED display is attractive as it may be more efficient than an OLED display (as LEDs are currently more efficient than OLEDs). Some speculate that Apple aims to use such displays in future Watch devices as making a smaller display is obviously easier at first.

Samsung sent out invitations to their 2nd 2015 - "Galaxy Unpacked Event" that will take place in August 13. Samsung will probably unveil the Galaxy Note 5. Here's the event invitation:

As you can see, Samsung is clearly hinting at a curved design - and this invitation is very similar to the Galaxy S6 event invitation sent out in early 2015. We wouldn't be very surprised to see a curved variant of the Note 5 - after all the Note 4 had its own single-side curved variant (the Galaxy Note Edge) and the GS6 Edge is very successful - beyond Samsung's own expectations.

In January 2015, LG introduced six new OLED TVs, including flat, curved and bendable ones - and all of them featuring 4K resolution. Up until now the company only launched two curved OLEDs (the 55" and 65" EG9600). LG today says that they will soon launch new OLED TV models to the Korean market, including flat OLEDs.

This is great news as even though LG claims that image quality in curved panels is better, many consumers prefer flat OLEDs as these look better when wall mounted. The price of the flat models will be the same as that of the curved models.

Today we launched OLED-Info's new design. The changes are not dramatic, but we changed some of the menu system, made the site (hopefully) cleaner and more modern. Most importantly, this design is now mobile-friendly and should prove easier to read on smartphones.

We hope this design will make the site nicer and easier to read, we'll be happy to hear your thoughts and comments!

According to reports from Korea, LG is considering moving the OLED lighting business from LG Chem to LG Display. The idea is that consolidating the OLED production of both displays and lighting in the same company will enable LG to advance OLED lighting more quickly - and at a lower cost.

The OLED Association goes on to speculate that LG Display may decide to convert one of its existing Gen-4.5 OLED display fabs to produce OLED lighting. This will make it even cheaper to expand capacity. Of course the downside is that LG Display will be more focused on displays than lighting as currently the OLED lighting market is still very small.

LG's OLED TV prices continue to drop: the 2015-model UHD (4K) 65" curved OLED TV (65EG9600) is now offered at $6,499. This is a $500 price drop from yesterday's price, and $2,500 from the original $8,999 price.

LG's EG9600 TVs were introduced in early 2015, featuring a new anti-glare filter, webOS 2.0 OS and quad-core CPUs. The 55" model, (55EG9600) costs $4,499.

ZTE announced two new devices today, both with AMOLED displays. First up is the Axon Watch, which is a smartwatch based on the Chinese TenCent OS (which means it will be sold only in China). It sports a circular 1.4" AMOLED display (400x400) a heart rate monitor, GPS and 4GB of internal memory.

The second device is the Axon Mini - the world's first smartphone that features a force touchscreen. It uses a 5.2" Super AMOLED display - and that's the only information ZTE released at this stage. The company also announced two more Android smartphones - but both use LCD displays.

Visionox unveiled a new rollable flexible AMOLED panel prototype. This is a 4.6" panel with a resolution of 800x480. This display has a curvature radius of less than 3 mm and a thickness of only 20 μm.

Visionox says that they plan to mass producing such displays within two years. Looking at the video above, it's clear that there are still defects in this display, so it will take some work to achieve mass production of such a display.

LG Display announced that it decided to build a new 6-Gen (1500x1850 mm) flexible OLED fab in a KRW1.05 trillion ($900 million) investment. The new E5 line will be located at LGD's Gumi Plant and will have a capacity of 7,500 monthly substrates - or 1.5 million 5.5" panels. The new fab is scheduled to begin mass production in the first half of 2017.

LGD has been internally discussing a new flexible OLED fab for quite a while, and it's great to see that they finally made an official decision. The flexible OLED market is expected to grow quickly in the near future as these displays unlock new applications and are very competitive in the wearable, automotive and mobile devices markets.