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Update: Here are all the details from LG's OLED TV launch

Back in March it was reported that LG plans to officially launch their 55" OLED TV during the Cannes film festival - and today there are new reports that they indeed intend to do so on Wednesday (May 23) - in Monte Carlo. According to Italian site DDay, invitations has been sent to reporters.

Hopefully during the launch LG will unveil the final mode number, price and actual shipping dates. Currently we know that the model is 55EM9600, and it uses a WOLED-CF design on an Oxide-TFT backplane. The panel is only 4mm thick, and the whole TV weighs just 7.5Kg. LG Display can currently make around 48,000 monthly 55" panels in their pilot 8.5-Gen production line. Estimates suggest that the TV will cost around $8,000.

Chimei Innolux's chairman Hsing-Chien Tuan says that the company plans to start AMOLED production before year-end 2012. CMI's 3.5-Gen AMOLED fab will produce small-sized panels. The production rate will be about 3,000-5,000 substrates a month.

Back in March 2011 CMI showed two AMOLED panels: 3.2" (320x480) and 3.5" (360x64). CMI were calling those displays TrueOLED, and apparently they use a WOLED-CF (RGBW) design. The panels featured 300cd/m² brightness, 30,000:1 contrast ratio, 160° viewing angles and 100% color gamut for the 3.2" panel (87% for the 3.5" one). We do not know whether the panels CMI plans to produce in 2012 will have the same specifications.

There are reports that LG Electronics plans to launch their 55" OLED TV in May during the Cannes film festival. The TV will cost 9 million Won - or about $7,900 (this is consistant with DisplaySearch's estimates). LGE originally planned to launch it during the London Olympics in July, but the company wants to be the first out with an OLED TV and so accelerated the production schedule. The company will make a decision on further OLED investment in July, after judging the first consumer reactions.

LG's 55" 55EM9600 is using a WOLED-CF design on an Oxide-TFT backplane. The panel is only 4mm thick, and the whole TV weighs just 7.5Kg. LG Display can currently make around 48,000 monthly 55" panels in their pilot 8.5-Gen production line.

Universal Display's CFO (Sidney Rosenblatt) attended Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference 2012 yesterday, and he gave some very interesting updates. First of all, he commented on the recent AUO and Idemitsu Kosan (IK) agreement. According to Sid, IK are not selling emitter materials - they are offering organic materials that go into other layers of the OLED stack. They do not believe the AUO-IK agreement will have any effect of PHOLED sales to AUO, and in fact he tells us that UDC and Idemitsu Kosan are developing OLED materials together for Sony.

Host materials

In their latest earning report of 3Q 2011, UDC announced that they started to offer OLED host materials - and had almost $8 million in revenue from those materials. Today Sidney explained this business a bit further. Host materials are the materials that you put the emitting materials into (Sidney used a metaphor - if the OLED is chocolate milk, then the milk is the host material and the chocolate is the emitter). These materials are considered a commodity, and UDC didn't think to sell those as it's not an interesting market for them.

A couple of days ago MicroOLED announced their next-generation 0.61" OLED microdisplay which features 5.4 million pixels. Today we have some more information and the product's data sheet. The most interesting info is that samples of the new products are already available - with volume production expected in 10 weeks.

It turns out that MicroOLED will offer two versions. The MDP02APFC offers full-color (using 4 sub white OLED subpixels and RGBW filters) and 1,300x1,044 resolution (just a little over SXGA which is 1,280x960). The sub-pixel pitch is 4.7x4.7 micrometre, the maximum brightness is 250Cd/m2 (typical brightness: 120 Cd/m2), the maximum contrast is 100,000:1 (typical contrast: 10,000:1) and the power consumption is 200 mW (minimum) in video mode.

There are reports that LG Display decided to built a pilot 3.5-Gen (730 × 460 mm) flexible OLED production line. They have ordered the equipment, which will arrive by 3Q 2012, and the line will become active by the end of 2012. An official from LGD is quoted saying that it will take 1-2 years to develop and verify the process and produce prototypes. The company hasn't decided on a production schedule yet.

LG Display's flexible OLEDs will use the same technology as Samsung's flexible prototypes - a polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use WOLED with color filters).

So, OLED was the most discussed tech trend on CES. But the OLED TVs also got a lot of praise from reviewers and consumers - who were amazed to see the panel's thinness, the contrast, the colors and the fast refresh rates. In short - the image on Samsung's and LG's OLED TVs is amazing!

Samsung Super OLED TV

CNET gave LG's OLED TV the "Best of CES" award: "The winning LG measures just 4mm in depth...and boasts a bezel around the screen just 1mm wide. It's basically all gorgeous picture... CES is a TV-centric show, OLED is potentially the best TV technology ever, and CNET editors agreed that 2012 would be the year of the organic diode". CNET actually says that it's hard to say which is the better OLED TV - the Samsung or the LG one, but LG seems to be more of a finished product, so they gave the award to LG.

One week after LG Display officially announced their upcoming 55" OLED TV panel, LG Electronics now released their own PR with new details and photos - and some interesting marketing messages. They also revealed the model number: 55EM9600. LGE says that the new panel uses their 4-Color Pixel and Color Refiner features. The four colors (RGBW) are made from white OLED subpixels with color filters (Kodak's technology). The "Color Refiner" is a set of algorithms which improves and refine hues and tones.

LG says that their OLED TV will generate the most natural colors of any TV set - at a much lower price point than could have been achieved using the standard OLED manufacturing process.

Update: LG Electronics revealed the model number (55EL9600) and posted some new photos and more details on the OLED TV...

LG Display announced that they will unveil a new 55" OLED TV panel at CES 2012, and offered some more details and a couple of photos. Last month LG said that their OLED TVs will be available in the middle of 2012. The panel is only 5mm thick, and is also lighter than LCD panels. It features a 100,000:1 contrast ratio, fast refresh rates and a wide color gamut (wider than LCD, according to LG). They also say that the TV is more power efficient than an LCD TV, but they wouldn't give any details yet.

LG Display's panel uses an Oxide-TFT backplane (this was announced before). According to LG this backplane offers an identical image to LTPS panels, while being significantly cheaper. The TV uses a white-OLED with color filter design (this was the technology LGD acquired from Kodak back in 2009).

MicroOLED was founded in 2007 - to develop and produce OLED microdisplays. The company had plans to release their first product towards the end of 2009, but these plans were scrapped. Last month the company announced that they are about the ship their first-gen product in 2 months, and already received orders for over 10,000 microdisplays. MicroOLED's first-gen display is a 9.6mm 800x480 (WVGA) OLED microdisplay that uses white SM-OLEDs and RGBB color filters. Power consumption is 25mW for 60Hz video at 150cd/m².

Eric Marcellin-Dibon, MicroOLED's co-founder, CEO and head of strategy and biz-dev was kind enough to answer a few questions we had. Eric has more than 20 years experience in the field of high technologies and consumer electronics. Previously director of the display strategy and general manager of the strategic sourcing group at Thomson, Eric held several management positions in France, Germany and in the UK.