Philips - Page 2

A couple of months ago US-based OLEDWorks announced that its Philips acquisition is finalized, and the company now introduces new OLED panels and modules.

So first up we have an update to Philips' OLED Brite FL300 panels. The Brite 2 FL300 are more efficient than the original FL300 (more than 60 lm/W for the 3,000K panel - up from 50 lm/W), a higher CRI (over 90, R9>50). The new panels are also available in two colors: 3,000K and 4,000K. You can find the preliminary product sheet here.

During an event in Europe, Philips announced it plans to launch their first OLED TV in Europe later this year. The company said that the first model will probably be a flat 55" model - although this hasn't been decided yet.

Philips' TV brand is now being handled by TP Vision, which actually made the demonstration in Brussels. TPV demonstrated an OLED panel prototype next to an LCD to show how the OLED image quality surpasses the LCD panel.

In April 2015, US-based OLEDWorks announced it will buy Philips' OLED business activity - including the production facility located in Aachen, Germany, and relevant IP. OLEDWorks was granted a license by Philips to market its OLED light source components under the Philips brand, and Philips will remain a distributor of the panels through its OEM sales channels.

Today OLEDWorks announced that the acquisition is complete. OLEDWorks has worked to re-brand their website and all of their owned digital properties to integrate Lumiblade product offerings and maintain a seamless transition for new and existing customers. OLED panel Manufacturing will continue in Aachen.

OLEDWorks announced that it plans to increase capacity in its OLED lighting fab in Lyell Avenue, Rochester, NY. OLEDWorks will invest $73.6 million in the new production line, and the company will get $2.5 million in state tax credits. OLEDWorks said it will hire 100 new employees for this fab "over the next five years".

A couple of months ago OLEDWorks announced it will acquire the key parts of Philips OLED lighting business, including the OLED lighting production fab in Aachen, Germany. It seems that OLEDWorks intends to operate two production lines - in the US and in Germany. Financial details of that deal have not been disclosed - it'll be interesting to see where OLEDWorks will get the money for the acquisition and the new fab in Rochester.

IDTechEx posted a very interesting analysis of the OLED lighting market, in which they see the OLED market growing very slowly - it will remain smaller than $80 million until 2017. The market will start picking up to reach $840 million in 2022 - still a very small slice of the global lighting market.

IDTechEx says that OLED technology is very slow to close up to performance and cost gap to LED based lighting. In addition, following the recent Philips OLED BU sale to OLEDworks (and Panasonic decision to dissolve its OLED lighting activity back in March 2014), the only two major companies left in the OLED market is LG Chem and Konica Minolta.

Remember Philips' LivingShapes interactive OLED mirror? The 64-OLED device was priced at €3,500, and Philips now announced a limited-time sale that offers the same device for €700. That's a 80% discount - that will be in effect till June 30th (or until Philips runs out of mirrors to sell - they currently have 60 in stock).

The Interactive mirror has 64 square OLED panels (8x8) each 42x44.2 mm in size (color temperature 3000K, total luminance 400 lm). The mirror uses infrared sensors that detects the outline of the person looking at the mirror and switches off the OLEDs that are in the field of vision - thus turning it into a mirror.

Philips announced a new OLED lighting panel, the Brite FL300 L which is a long (46x222 mm) version of the FL300 OLED. The panel features a brightness of 300 lumens, efficiency of 40-50 lm/W, a color temperature of 3,000K, nominal CRI of 80 and a lifetime rating of 10,000 hours at 300 lm (50,000h at 115 lm). It will ship in Q3 2015 and you can find a preliminary datasheet here.

Philips also launched a new OLED-focused lighting magazine, which can read online here. Philips' idea is to show what is possible with OLED lighting, and the magazine includes many design prototypes, OLED products and interviews with lighting designers.

Earlier this year Philips announced its intention to spin-off its OLED activity, and the company started searching for a buyer for its whole OLED business activity. Today it was announced that US-based OLEDWorks will buy the key parts of Philips OLED lighting business.

Philips will establish a new legal entity and transfer key parts of its OLED business, including the production facility located in Aachen, Germany, and relevant IP. This new entity will then be sold to OLEDWorks, which will be granted a license by Philips to market its OLED light source components under the Philips brand. Philips will remain a distributor of the panels through its OEM sales channels.

Magneti Marelli Automotive Lighting designed a new OLED based automobile rearlight prototype, that uses Philips red and amber OLED lighting panels. The prototype also includes LEDs for the reverse function. When off, the OLED elements appear to be a silvery mirror and are "extremely elegant".

The OLED prototype received the "Red Dot" award for design quality. The "Red Dot Award" for product design was established in 1955 as is one of the most coveted product design awards at an international level.

In  CES 2015, Audi had a nice OLED-based lighting installation at their booth showing the company's logo made from 124 red 70x70 mm OLED panels. Audi finally published a video showing this installation in action:

We do not know who provided the OLEDs for Audi, but it's likely to be Philips, as the two companies have been collaborating on OLED panels for years - in 2012 Audi unveiled three OLED designs, including the rear-mounted "swarm" and in 2013 Audi developed the world's first large-area 3D OLED car rear lighting panels and installed a prototype on an Audi TT. Both of these development was done in collaboration with Philips.