Towards the end of 2019 LG Display started to supply Apple with 6.1" film-touch OLED flexible displays for its 2020 iPhone, and IHS Markit now says that these shipments propelled LGD's OLED smartphone market share to 10.8% in Q4 2019 (up from only 2.1% in Q3 2019).

In fact LGD now says that mobile OLED revenues make up for 36% of its total revenues in Q4 - which is higher than its OLED TV revenues for the first time ever.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q4 2019. Revenues were $7.3 million (up 35% from Q4 2018), and the net loss was $0.2 million (down from $2.4 million in Q4 2018).

The company's booking in Q4 2019 were a record for eMagin, exceeding $15 million. The company received 80 orders and it has started a new consumer-related AR development project for a next-generation display for a Tier-1 customer.

Apple's latest flagship iPhone displays all use OLED screens, and Apple is charging a hefty fee for a screen replacement - $280 if you do not have AppleCare. Another option is to buy the OLED screen from a vendor - at a lower cost, and perform the replacement yourself.

One such vendor is iFixit - and the screens still cost around $185 for the iPhone Xs and $155 for the iPhone X. iFixit is now offering a lower cost alternative - replace the OLED with an LCD display, which costs around $100 less than the fancier OLED option.

TCL has unveiled two interesting foldable OLED prototype devices. The first one is a tri-foldable OLED smartphone, that has a 10" 3K AMOLED display that folds into a 6.64" one. The second is the sliding-expanding prototype we already reported on last month.

These are still very early prototype devices, reportedly the software is not taking advantage of the special display features.

OLED material developer Cynora recently announced its first commercial product, the cyBlueBooster fluorescent blue emitter that is 15% more efficient that current fluorescent blue emitters on the market.

This was a very interesting announcement, and Cynora's CEO Adam Kablanian was kind enough to answer a few questions we had to help understand the new material and Cynora's current business and latest technology.

Korean ETNews reports that Samsung is expecting higher demand for foldable OLED displays, and the company decided to increase its monthly production capacity from 260,000 units to around 600,000 by the end of May 2020, and over a million displays by the end of the year.

ETNews also reports that Samsung Electronics is planning to launch its third foldable smartphone later in 2020, and Chinese phone makers are also requesting foldable displays from SDC.

IHS Markit estimates that 1.1 million OLED TVs shipped in Q4 2019. This is the first time over 1 million OLED TVs were shipped in a quarter. Total OLED TV sales in 2019 reached 3 million units - a 1.3% of the total TV market.

LG Electronics is still the leader in the OLED TV market, with a market share of 53.9% (598,000 units). LG's market share is dropping as more and more companies join the OLED camp. China has become the world's largest OLED TV market (33% by units) - surpassing Korea (32.1%) for the first time in 2019.

OLED material developer Cynora announced its first commercial product, a fluorescent blue emitter that is based on an "advanced molecular design" that is 15% more efficient that current fluorescent blue emitters on the market. Cynora brands its new material as cyBlueBooster, and it says it is currently available for commercialization in several shades of blue.

This could be very exciting news - while the whole industry is looking for next-generation emitters using TADF or PHOLED technologies, Cynora could have found an easier path to reduce power consumption by 15%. OF course a TADF or PHOLED emitter will achieve a reduction of 75% in power consumption compared to currently-used fluorescent emitters.

LG Display's original plan was to start producing OLED TV panels at its 8.5-Gen OLED fab in Guangzhou in October 2019, but the company faced technical issues - and even though LGD said it fixed these issues and production will start by the end of January 2020, that didn't happen.

According to a new report from Korea, the CoronaVirus outbreak caused LGD further delays, and mass production is now expected to start in 'early' Q2 2020 - so April 2020 at the earliest.

Korea's KAIST institute researchers developed a new stress-relief substrate that is suitable for the creation of stretchable OLEDs that can maintain their performance under high-strain deformation.

The researchers say that the new stress-relief substrates have a unique structure and is made from a patterned "upper substrate" with bridges on top of pillars that decentralize the stress on the device.