LG Electronics says that a comparison marketing campaign in Australia helped the company double sales of OLED TVs. The multi-million dollar campaign compared the quality of LG's OLED TVs to rival LCD TVs.

Interestingly, the story says that LG currently offers 55" and 65" OLED TVs in Australia, but that next year it will also offer small TVs. This is the first we hear of smaller OLED TVs from LG - I'm not sure if this Channelnews report is correct in that regard.

Futaba has been producing flexible PMOLEDs since 2013, and the company demonstrated its flexible OLEDs at SID 2016. Those OLEDs are flexible, but not bendable by the user (which is why Futaba calls them film-type OLEDs).

Futaba's current range of flexible OLEDs include several panels. A 1.4" 128x16 white one (introduced in 2013, was adopted in Huawei's Talkband and Garmin's Vivosmart fitness trackers), and a larger 1.8" white 160x32 panel entered mass production in November 2015.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, Samsung decided to increase its OLED production capacity by over 50% in the near future as it aims to start supplying Apple and other mobile device makers with AMOLED panels.

Samsung Display will invest around $6.8 billion in 2016 to boost capacity, which will translate to a yearly capacity of over 200 million smartphone-sized panels.

Update: LG Display sent us a message stating that this report is not correct, and the company does not supply the OLEDs to Audi...

In April 2016 Audi unveiled its 2016 TT RS coupe - with optional OLED taillights. This is the world's first serially-produced car to have OLED taillights - and indeed this is one of the highlights in Audi's new car.

Up until now we did not know who produced the OLEDs for Audi, but according to ETNews, LG Display is the supplier of these OLED lighting panels. LG is gearing up to supply OLEDs to other autotmobile makers, and has recently announced plans to invest in a Gen-5 (1000x1200 mm) OLED lighting fab that will be located in Gumi, South Korea.

In January 2016, LG announced that it will invest $380 million to double its OLED TV production capacity - by building a new production line with a capacity of 25,000 substrates per month. The new line will be completed by Q2 2017.

According to the Korea Herald, LG started to execute this plan, and have ordered new production equipment from Korean suppliers. LG will replace the LCD production line at its P8 plant in Paju and will move the current equipment to its Chinese plant in Guangzhou.

As the OLED market is quickly expanding, we see massive investment in production capacity, mainly from Korea and China. According to Reuters, Canon Tokki, the leading vacuum evaporation equipment maker, is experiencing a boom in orders.

Tokki has a large order backlog - worth several years of its current production capacity. According to some reports, Tokki has turned down orders from LG Display recently as Samsung has taken up all of its capacity - and so LG had to order equipment from Tokki's competitors (mainly SFA Engineering and Ulvac).

LG lowered the price of its 65" flat OLED B6 (entry-level 2016 model) to $3,999 (down from $5,999). The 55" B6 model costs $2,999.

The 65" curved OLED C6 is now shipping as well - but for $4,999. It's highly likely that LG will lower the price of the curved model to match the flat one soon. The 55" curved C6 costs the same as the flat B6, at $2,999.

Taiwan's AU Optronics is producing AMOLEDs in its small line in Singapore, focusing on wearable displays. AUO's Chairman and CEO, Paul Peng, says that the company will take a "cautious attitude" towards OLED investments as it wants to make sure that these investment will be profitable. AUO sees a large increase in OLED capacity in 2018 (mainly from China-based players) - but its not clear if there will be enough OLED demand.

Reports say that AUO is also thinking about producing OLEDs in its upcoming LTPS line in Kunshan, China - but it seems that the company is still debating whether this is a wise move. The company is still developing OLED technologies of course - mainly OLEDs for VR and flexible OLEDs.

Razer demonstrated the newest version of the open-source VR HMD Dev-Kit, the OSVR. The new so-called HDK2 improves the previous design with a new higher-resolution OLED. The HDK2 has a 2160x1200 OLED, while the HDK1.4 had a Full-HD one.

Razer will ship the OSVR HDK 2 next month for $399 (the current HDK 1.4 costs $299 and it will remain available for the time being).

UBI Research says that the total OLED market reached 91.3 million units in Q1 2016, and Samsung Display produced about 86.7 million panels (95% of the total OLED market).

UBI further estimates that Samsung produced 12.1 million flexible OLEDs for its Edge-type phones (14% of its total OLED shipments).