2011 year in review... and what will 2012 bring us?

So, 2011 is almost over - and it was another exciting year for the OLED industry (here's our list of most popular 2011 stories, by the way). The biggest AMOLED player is still Samsung - and they enjoyed great success. During 2011 Samsung launched Super AMOLED Plus displays - which use a normal RGB matrix. They keep producing Super AMOLED (Pentile) displays too, and even reached HD resolution using these on some phones. Samsung's own Galaxy S II phone (which uses a 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus display) was a huge success - and is in fact Samsung's fastest selling phone ever.

But Samsung is not just targeting phones and digital cameras. Larger AMOLEDs are coming too. Samsung is producing the 5" AMOLED used in Sony's PSP Vita, and Samsung's own Galaxy Note phone has a 5.3" Super AMOLED HD display. In September the company announced the largest Super AMOLED display yet - a 7.7" 1280x800 panel that will be used in the upcoming Galaxy Tab 7.7 Android tablet (which will be released soon).

We are still waiting for the 2nd AMOLED producer. LG Display's 4.5-Gen AMOLED fab is now on-line (producing 4,000 substrates a month, and supplying panels for LG Electronics and for Nokia), but the company announced they will stop investing in small OLED display production - and focus on large OLED panels for TVs. Hopefully in 2012 we'll see at least one new player producing AMOLEDs - AU Optronics. They are already shipping sample 4" panels for customers. AUO is also developing OLED TV panels and flexible and transparent OLEDs.

OLED lighting

2011 was also a good year for OLED lighting. Quite a bit of companies are shipping OLED panels now - Philips, Osram, Lumiotec, Kaneka, Verbatim, Konica Minolta and Panasonic. There are some companies that offer cheaper OLED lamps - such as Blackbody's €572 V-LUX or Lumiotec's $450 Hanger.

2011 brought us some interesting technical advancements, new OLED research and pilot production investment plans and new companies and joint-ventures. Prices are expected to drop soon, but it seems that no-one is willing to commit large sums into production lines. There are still manufacturing, efficiency and other issues that needs to be addressed first.

What will 2012 bring us?

The biggest story in 2012 will probably be the new OLED TV panels. Just a couple of days ago LG officially announced that they will demonstrate 55" OLED TV panels at CES 2012. LG TVs are expected by June 2012 or so. These will be expensive, and produced in limited quantities (around 10,000 a month or so) - but at least we'll have the first real commercial OLED TV product.

Samsung are also expected to announce 55" OLED TV panels during 2012. The two Korean rivals use very different technology (LG uses Oxide-TFT and white OLEDs with color filters, while Samsung will probably use LTPS and RBG OLED pixels) - and we can expect an interesting 'marketing war' between these two companies. Hopefully this will actually serve to educate the consumers and introduce them to OLED TVs.

Most experts believe that real OLED TV production, at competitive prices will start at around 2013 and 2014. But a lot will depend on the market reaction to those first sets we'll see next year.

The production of small/medium AMOLED panels will probably keep acceleration, and we hope to see Samsung expand their fabs. New 5" and 7" OLED products are expected to be introduced during the year, and we also expect lot's of new AMOLED phones and cameras from Samsung, Google, Nokia and Motorola.

Samsung is expected to start producing flexible AMOLEDs in 2012, and introduce products with these displays. We may see some advances in transparent OLEDs as well. Hopefully in 2012 OLEDs real advantages will finally begin to surface.

We also expect quite a few rumors regarding Apple's first OLED product... Will the new iPhone, iPod or iPad use an OLED display? Will Apple introduce a premium OLED TV product? It seems that Samsung does have the capacity to supply small OLEDs for Apple now, and we know that Apple are interested in OLEDs, but all these are just rumors at present...