Last month Japan-based OLED material maker Idemitsu Kosan announced that it has decided to expand the OLED material production capacity at it's Korean subsidiary Idemitsu Electronic Materials Korea. Idemitsu now announced that it plans to establish a new OLED materials development company in Switzerland.

Idemitsu says the new company will be established "in order to enhance its development structure in preparation for future growth in demand for OLED materials". Idemitsu has been collaborating with BASF's Switzerland's branch "for some time", and now Idemitsu will hire OLED researchers from BASF (this probably follows Universal Display's acquisition of BASF's OLED IP in June 2016).

Last week Samsung released several videos that showcase its latest Super AMOLED displays. The videos shows what looks to be an actual upcoming phone with almost no bezels on the sides and no physical buttons on the front:

This design has been suggested (leaked?) before for Samsung's upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S8. Samsung is expected to reveal the S8 soon, at the MWC 2017 event (February 27th). Of course this could just be a concept handset created for the AMOLED video, but it could also be Samsung's actual new phone that was added to the video by mistake (or not by mistake).

According to a report from Japan's Nikkei Asian Review, Sharp will build an OLED production line at Foxconn's factory in Zhengzhou (northern China). The investment in this new fab will total around 100 billion yen (about $865 million) and production will begin in 2019. Sharp is specifically aiming to supply screens for Apple's future iPhones.

In October 2016 Sharp announced that it will invest $570 million to build OLED pilot lines in Osaka and in the Mie Prefecture. The pilot lines will begin OLED production in the summer of 2018. It was later reported that Sharp is considering to establish those lines in China instead - so it may be that this new Zhengzhou fab is actually the one reported in October.

According to reports, Dell canceled its high-end 30" 4K OLED monitor, the Ultrasharp 30 OLED. Dell announced the monitor at CES 2016 (one year ago, exactly) and promised it will ship by the end of March 2016 for $4,999.

Apparently Dell were unhappy with the image quality of that OLED panel - especially the amount of color drift that it displayed when you viewed the monitor from the sides - which is surprising because OLED's viewing angles are excellent.

We spent last week visiting China - mostly around Shanghai. We attended the Printed & Flexible Electronics China 2017 conference, visited both EverDisplay and Visionox to learn more about their OLED products and plans, and also went to Wuxi to see the interesting and quite impressive graphene center over there.

Samsung Display and LG Display are the clear leaders in AMOLED production - for almost 10 years now. But the market is now changing as several new players, mostly in China, are starting to commercially produce AMOLED displays - mostly for mobile phones, wearables and VR headsets.

UBI Research says that automobiles will start adopting OLED displays "in earnest" starting in 2018 - for instrument cluster and infotainment displays. The automotive display market itself is expected to grow quickly (CAGR of about 17% from 2017-2022) as new technologies mean that displays in cars are getting more and more important.

UBI estimates the total automotive display market at $25 billion by 2022 - out of which OLEDs will account for about 20%, or $5 billion. The main challenge still facing massive OLED adoption, according to UBI, is the lifetime of AMOLED panels.

LG did not officially state the price or release day of its top-of-the-line OLEDW7 Wallpaper Signature OLED TV, but BestBuy already lists the 65" model for $7,999. You can pre-order it now, although it's not clear when the TVs will actually ship.

LG's OLEDW7 TV (which comes in either 65" or 77") is extremely thin (2.57 mm all the way) and attaches to the wall using magnets. A thin cable on the bottom connects to the sound bar. Other features include a 4K resolution, HDR support (to four different standards), WebOS 3.5 and Dolby Atmos sound.

Meyer Burger announced that it has shipped a CONx TFE OLED thin film encapsulation system to an Asian customer. This system includes two deposition technologies, inkjet printing and PECVD to offer a complete encapsulation solution for flexible OLEDS.

The CONx TFE system compreses of Meyer Burger's proprietary remote plasma PECVD for inorganic coating and its PiXDRO inkjet printing technology for the deposition of accurately positioned and homogeneous organic layers. Meyer Burger says that the system provides excellent water and oxygen barrier properties without compromising the optical transparency of the encapsulation layer all the while operating at low temperatures and low ion bombardment.

Electronics automotive products maker Visteon is showing new flexible OLED prototypes at CES. These new OLED panels can be used for either instrument clusters or infotainment displays.

These flexible OLED displays seem quite similar to LGD's 12.3" FHD plastic-OLEDs, but Visteon could be using OLEDs made by a different company as well.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) unveiled its latest concept car, called the Chrysler Potal. This is an all-electric family-oriented minivan that is capable of semi-autonomous operation.

The Portal includes several new technologies for FCA, and the dashboard makes use of two large displays as you can see above. According to OLEDNet, both displays are AMOLED displays developed by Samsung Display - the top elongated one is a flexible plastic-based OLED while the lower one is a glass-based 12" AMOLED.