In March 2017 Konica Minolta and Pioneer announced that the two companies are set to merge their OLED business unit, and on June 1st the new 50:50 joint venture, called Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED, was officially established.

Konica Minolta says that the new company will take charge of all business and product planning, product development, production technology development and marketing functions of both companies' OLED lighting business to drive its initiatives.

In January 2017 Kopin unveiled its first OLED microdisplay, the 1-inch 120 Hz 2k x 2k Lightning panel, and in March 2017 Kopin announced that it is developing a VR headset in collaboration with Goertek - a mobile VR headset that uses the Lightning OLED microdisplay.

The two companies now unveiled their VR headset reference design, called the Elf VR. The Elf VR utilizes Kopin's Lightning OLED microdisplay to create a headset that is lighter, more efficient and with a higher image quality compared to the current VR headsets based on smartphone-sized OLEDs. The Elf VR adopts an advanced optical solution with a compact Multi-Lens design. The reference design supports two novel optics solutions 70 degrees FOV for film-like beauty or 100 degrees FOV for deep immersion.

Yeolight Technology (which was spun-off Visionox in May 2015) developed a new bright Amber OLED panel. The panel's size is 85x85 mm (active area 76.5x76.5 mm) and its color temperature is 2000K-2600K. The efficiency is >70 lm/W at 2,000 cd/m2 brightness. The lifetime is over 20,000 hours.

This new panel is still a prototype - but Yeolight says it can already be mass produced at the company's 2.5-Gen production line.

Canada-based VueReal has developed a 4K Micro-LED microdisplay (6000 PPI). The company plans to finish the verification and evaluation this year and provide samples to several interested customers by October 2017. In 2018 VueReal will start mass producing such displays for niche customers and aim to license its technology for display makers.

VueReal says that its "Continous Pixelation" Technology enables it to achieve low-power high brightness (10,000 nits) high-density displays at very high yields and at an affordable price.

LG Display participated in Milan Design Week 2017 (Euroluce) and demonstrated its latest OLED lamps and panels - and the company also unveiled the largest OLED installation ever - the 30,000 OLED panel "Wall the of the Sun". LGD now published the video you see below that shows all these exciting new OLED lighting installations and lamps: