Taiwan's ITRI demonstrated several new flexible OLED prototypes at Touch Taiwan. As promised a few weeks ago, ITRI demonstrated a 7" flexible OLED touch panel prototype. The panel has been developed in collaboration with Heraeus which integrated its Clevios PEDOT conductive polymer based touchpanel.

ITRI also exhibited a z-fold 7.1" Full-HD (310 PPI) AMOLED prototype that can be folded both inward and outward. The bending radius is 5 mm.

IDTechEx Research says that the flexible encapsulation (barrier) market for flexible devices (such as displays, but not only) will reach over $184 by 2020. IDTechEx sees next-gen single-layer encapsulation solutions to capture a part of the market in the future.

IDTechEx also takes a look at two specific technologies. Flexible glass is not seen to become the solution of choice in the short to medium terms due to the fragility and the fact that it cannot be stressed out of axis - and extreme flexibility can be a problem. Flexible glass is seen to be the best choice for a substrate material, though.

Mitsubishi Chemical and Pioneer announced that they developed a bluelight-less OLED lighting panel. The OLE-P0909-C3S module which contains this panel is actually already shipping, and it is produced using the wet-coating process developed by the two Japanese companies.

The new panel emits a minimal portion of blue light - less than 1% of the amount emitted by Mitsubishi and Pioneer's regular 3000K OLED panel. The panel is a candle-color type - with a 1900K color temperature. The module size is 92.4x92.4 mm (active area 76x76 mm) and is 4.3 mm thick. The maximum luminance is 3,000 cd/m².

Tomorrow AU Optronics will unveil a new 5" bendable AMOLED prototype that integrates a sensor that can detect when user bend the panel. The idea that detecting the size and direction of the manipulation can help create a user interface that complements regular touch functions.

The 2011 Nokia Kinetic demonstrator

This is the first time we hear of an OLED display maker that is going to present such a prototype - but the idea is not new. Nokia demonstrated a similar device back in 2011 - the so-called Kinetic phone concept used a 4" OLED that was bendable, and bending the device could be used to select an option or zoom an image.

Taiwan-based PMOLED maker Wisechip says that the company is the world's second largest PMOLED maker, and is now enjoying the surge in the PMOLED wearable market - due to its three-year long focus on that market.

Wisechip quotes IHS DisplaySearch that sees the PMOLED market growing from 53.5 million units ($368 million in sales) to over 70 million units (and almost $450 million in sales) in 2015. The volume growth will continue until 2018, while revenues will reach a peak in 2016 and then decline (due to lower average panel costs, evidently). Most of the growth will come from wearable devices and smart home applications.

In January 2015, LG announced their new OLED TVs for 2015. The company is mostly pushing curved TVs, but many people actually prefer the flat variants. But it seems that the company's 2015 4K flat OLED TVs are finally coming to the US, following their recent launch in Korea.

According to BestBuy, both the 55" 55EF9500 and 65" 65EF9500 are on their way to the US - and will be on sale soon. Hopefully LG will price them similarly to the curved variants - or even cheaper as they are easier to produce. Only yesterday LG lowered the price of their curved OLEDs: the 65" curved OLED TV is now offered for $5,999 and the 55" is priced now at $3,999.

AU Optronics is focused on OLEDs for the wearable market, and is already producing 1.63" panels. AUO is also developing 1.4" and 1.3" circular AMOLEDs, and today the company demonstrated three OLEDs for the wearable market, including a new 1.5" square AMOLED (which you can see below, together with the 1.4" circular and the 1.63" square one).

AUO is also producing 4.3", 5" and 5.5" AMOLED displays for mobile phones. Please contact us if you need help with finding a supplier for these new AMOLED displays.

Today Amazon lowered the prices of several LG OLED TVs. The 65EG9600, LG's 2015-model UHD (4K) 65" curved OLED TV is now offered for $5,999 (the first time a 65" OLED panels goes below $6,000). The 55" 4K OLED TV (55EG9600) is priced now at $3,999. It's great to see how prices of LG's 4K OLED TVs keep going down.

LG also now offers the 55" FHD (2014 model) 55EC9300 for $1,999, which matches the lowest price of the 2013 model (which now seems to be out of stock at Amazon). 

A collaborative Innovate UK project called Graphted was launched in April 2015 to evaluate the potential of graphene as a transparent electrode when dispersed in a polymeric matrix. The project will focus on graphene inks and aims to show evidence that they can be used in large-area devices such as OLEDs and OPVs.

The project is led by UK's PolyPhotonix, who's partnering with Applied Graphene Materials and the CPI. The project will begin by examining graphene's use in phototherapy medical devices - as Polyphotonic's first commercial product is the Noctura OLED sleep mask which helps patients with Diabetic Retinopathy.

Audi will unveil its new luxury electric crossover concept car next month - the e-tron quattro. The car has three electric motors and can reach 310 miles between charges. The inside of the car uses an all-OLED interface. This is just a concept car, but Audi will release an all-electric sport SUV in 2018. Hopefully it will retain the OLED displays.

From the image above, you can see that Audi will use at least 4 OLEDs. The center console OLED seems to be similar to the flexible OLED shown in the Audi Prologue concept. That display (produced by Samsung Display) was 8.9 x 5.6 inch in size and featured a resolution of 2560x1600 (287 PPI). The e-tron will also use another flexible OLED.