AU Optronics announced their financial results for 4Q 2011, with a record loss of $21 NT billion (almost $700 million USD). AUO is hoping to return to profitability - mostly because of growth in demand for LCD TVs in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Brazil. Regarding AUO's OLED program, the company re-iterated plans to mass produce AMOLED panels for mobile phone in this quarter (a little sooner then expected, actually), and more interestingly they said they plan to unveil OLED TV panel samples by the end of 2012.
AUO already unveiled a 32" OLED TV prototype back in November 2011, but they probably want to unveil larger panels towards the end of the year - and ones that are closer to mass production. The 32" prototype AUO shows had a Oxide-TFT (IGZO) backplane and was fabricated using vapor deposition using a metal mask. The panel featured Full-HD (1920x1080) resolution, 100,000:1 contrast ration, 0.01ms response time and brightness of 200cd/m2.
AUO's smaller AMOLEDs that they will soon start producing will be 4" to 5" in size and will be sold to smartphone makers. The panels will feature 250-300 ppi (without pentile). The panels use an LTPS substrate and will be produced in AUO's 3.5-Gen line in Hsinchu, Taiwan. In the second half of 2013, AUO's 4.5-Gen AMOLED Line in Singapore (at AFPD) will start producing panels as well.
Just a few days ago AUO announced a strategic alliance with Idemitsu Kosan on OLED materials and technology.
samples, samsung pushing back... and a couple of weeks ago, it sounded as if there were supposed to be tens of thousands of TVs available already in the second half of this year.