In March 2018 OLEDWorks launched its first flexible OLED panels, branded as BendOLEDs. The company now announced that the panels are now commercially available - and rebranded as LumiCurve Wave, which is the first panel in OLEDWorks LumiCurve product family.

The LumiCurve Wave is produced on Corning's 0.1mm thin Willow Glass flexible glass substrate. OLEDWorks says that the Wave panels are extremely thin and light and deliver the superb light quality and excellent color rendering that is uniquely achievable with OLED.

Google's 2017 Pixel 2 XL was one of the first phones to adopt LG Display's pOLEDs (6" 1440x2880) - and initial reviews of the display were rather dismal - as both reviewers and customers complained about bad color reproduction, graininess and problematic viewing angles. Many users also reported serious image retention issues.

In 2017, Google used Samsung's Super AMOLED displays in the smaller in 2017. This year, for the 2018 Google Pixel 3, Google chose SDC's 6.3" 1440x2960 Super AMOLED for the larger Pixel 3 XL - with proved to be a top-notch display. For the smaller Pixel 3, Google picked LG Display's 5.5" 1080x2160 - probably hoping that LGD managed to improve its displays - and most importantly its quality controls.

Researchers from the University of California Berkley developed a new flexible and lightweight blood oxygen sensor that can map oxygen levels over large area. The sensor uses an array of red and near-infrared OLEDs, together with organic photo-diodes, printed on a flexible substrate.

The research was supported by Cambridge Display Technology, which means that these red and near-infrared printed OLEDs use polymer emitters (PLEDs).

As OLED is an emissive display technology, an OLED pixel only draws power when it is used - and the brighter it is, the more power it consumers. This of course means that adopting a dark UI is better for your device's power life.

During Google's recent Android Dev Summit, the company detailed the power consumption of the OLED display used in its 2016 Pixel smartphone (an SDC FHD 5" AMOLED). As you can see in the image above, the power consumption is different for each color (with red being the most efficient color and blue the least efficient). Surprisingly the display draws quite a bit of power even when completely black.

Merck announced that is has signed a Memorandam of Understanding with China's Visionox to accelerate the development and application of OLED displays. Merck did not provide a lot of details, but it did say that this agreement markets a strategic alliance between Merck and Visionox.

Merck offers a complete portfolio of materials for OLED display and lighting devices - including evaporation and soluble materials suitable for ink jet printing.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q3 2018. eMagin said it had another strong quarter supported by growth in its military with several new program wins and in its commercial business. Total revenues were $6.9 million (a 60% increase from Q3 2017), and operating loss was $1.3 million (down from $3 million in Q3 2018). Including a non-cash change in value of warrants, the company had a small net profit in the quarter.

Regarding its consumer business, eMagin updates that it has achieved design approval from one of its Tier-1 consumer electronics partners. eMagin's foundry partner will produce wafer for display prototypes for this customer. eMagin says that its direct-emission OLED microdisplays meets the wide field of view, no screen door effect and high brightness that the partner requires.

IHS says that the foldable OLED market will grow from 200,000 units in 2018 to over 50 million units by 2025, taking up 6% of the total OLED market (825 million panels) and 11% of the total flexible OLED market (476 million).

IHS sees fast growth ahead for the market, but the analysts say that smartphone brands are cautious about launching foldable smartphones because the phones should be durable enough for repeated folding and thin and light enough even when supporting a larger display and battery.

As expected, Samsung unveiled its upcoming foldable smartphone yesterday. The rumors were correct, and Samsung's first foldable device will have two screens - a large 7.3" foldable AMOLED that folds inside, and a smaller OLED that is used when the phone is closed. Samsung brands the display as the Samsung Infinity Flex Display.

The inner foldable display is a 7.3" AMOLED with a resolution of 1532x2152 (361 PPI). The outer display is a 4.5" 840x1960 AMOLED. The whole device seems to be quite thick and about double the depth compared to a standard smartphone.

Recently several display producers in Korea and China started to produce mobile flexible OLED display, aiming to compete with Samsung Display for the high-end part of the smartphone display market.

Some of these new displays suffer from display quality issues - whether from the display itself (as was the case in the first LGD pOLEDs used in the Google Pixel 2 devices) and some from the assembly contacts (which seems to be the case in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro).

BOE is hosting its Global Innovation Partner Conference 2018 (BOE IPC-2018, which invited experts from all over the world to see BOE's latest technology and future trends.

During the event, BOE unveiled an ink-jet printed 55" UHD OLED TV prototype. This is the first time that BOE demonstrated an ink-jet printed TV (in May 2018 BOE unveiled 5.5" FHD flexible AMOLED which was also produced using a printing process).