Earlier this month we reported that the US district court in Texas decreed that Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics are to pay $62.7 million in damages as the companies wilfully infringed upon two of Solas OLED fundamental OLED patents (USPTO #7,446,338 and #9,256,311).

Samsung proceeded to file a patent office challenge against the #311 patent, and apparantly Samsung won the challenge. The patent describes a flexible touch sensor that is wrapped around the edge of the display - and Samsung argued that as a flexible touch sensor is already known, this patent is "obvious". It appears as if Samsung will not have to pay the $35.4 million in damages for this patent.

LG is gearing up to start shipping its new 2021 OLED TVs, and the company has announced pricing and availability for most of the models.

The entry-level A1 series will ship in June, with prices ranging from $1,299 for the 48" model to $3,199 for the 77-inch model.

In past years Apple had to pay millions of dollars to Samsung Display as a compensation for lower smartphone OLED orders. Apple is committed to buy a certain amount of displays, and this payment is a fine due to lower orders.

Due to lower OLED orders in 2021, analysts estimate that Apple, again, will have to compensate Samsung. The main fault is with lower sales of Apple's iPhone 12 mini. In total, according to reports, Apple reduced its OLED Orders for the iPhone 12 series by 20% to 75 million units in the first half of 2021.

Samsung Display has recently announced two design wins for its smartphone LTPO AMOLED displays - the Oppo Find X3 series and the OnePlus 9 Pro. Both adopt the same 6.7-inch 1440x3216 120Hz HDR10+ (1,300 nits peak) LTPO AMOLED display.

Samsung also announced that in the past the company's priority was to improve the image quality and the design of its OLED displays. Moving forward, SDC will focus on lowering the power consumption of its OLED displays. SDC will do so by developing low-power materials and "optimizing power-efficient technologies".

DSCC says that flexible OLED fab utilization has been low since the beginning of 2021, and this will remain so for the next quarter as well. Utilization at rigid OLED lines is higher. This has been the pattern in previous years - lower production in the first half of the year and higher volumes at the second half of the year.

LG's OLED TV fab utilization has been historically very high (and close to 100%) - until 2020 which have seen lower utilization due the ramp-up at the Guangzhou fab. But in 2021 LG has managed to increase its yields again.

Last month Huawei started shipping its second-generation foldable smartphone, the Mate X2, and the first review, from Android Authority is in. And the reviewer really likes the device - saying it may even be better than Samsung's own foldable smartphones.

The inner-folding 8-inch 90Hz 2480 x 2200 AMOLED is said to be beautiful, and it is completely flat when open - with a really minimal bezel that can barely be seen. According to the reviewer, that's a huge improvement over all other foldables they used. The phones feels very solid, in fact, and the hinge seems much more durable than before.

Phosphorescent materials are based on the addition of a heavy-metal to the emissive materials, and most (if not all?) commercial materials use Iridium. The price of this rare metal has hit an all-time high last week.

Towards the end of last year, the price of one oz of Iridium was $1,760. Last week it hit $6,000 - the price jumped over 300% in just three months. Experts explain that the price has risen due to a disruption in the supply in South Africa (which supplies around 80% of the global market) and strong demand from the electrical and electrochemical sector.

LG Electronics will soon start shipping its 2021 OLED TVs. The OLED C1, which will likely to be the company's most popular OLED TV, can now be pre-ordered in the US, starting at $2,000 for the 55-inch model. The 65-inch model costs $2,750. Both TVs will ship by the end of April 2021. We do not know the prices yet for the other sizes (the OLED C1 offers 120Hz 4K 48-inch, 55-inch, 65-inch, 77-inch and also 83-inch panels).

The 2021 C1 OLED TV range features LG's 4th generation a9 AI processor, the company's latest webOS v6 and supports HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Atmos. For gamers, the TVs offer HDMI 2.1, G-SYNC, FreSync, VRR and ALLM.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin posted its financial results for Q4 2020. Revenues for the quarter were $7.7 million (up from $7.3 million in Q3 2019) with contract revenue of $1.5 million reflecting continued work for a Tier-1 consumer company.

Net loss for Q4 2020 was $3.7 million. For the full year 2020, eMagin reports revenues of $29.4 million, up from $26.7 million in 2019. The net loss in 2020 was $11.5 million.

The Indian government is planning to offer incentives schemes with an aim to setup display fabs in India. The Indian ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) has invited "experssions of interest" from companies that aim to setup display fabs in India - for LCD, OLED or QLED displays. Companies have been given time till April 30 to apply.

This follows previous incentive schemes in India for mobile devices and IT hardware manufacturing. For the display manufacturing scheme, the Indian government plans to establish a complete ecosystem for components throughout the country.