LG

Revenues for the first quarter of 2008 were $2,716,819, compared to $3,014,630 for the first quarter of 2007. Commercial revenue, which includes commercial chemical revenue, license fees and royalty income, increased to $1,555,065 for the first quarter of 2008, from $1,440,900 for the first quarter of 2007. Developmental revenue, which includes contract research revenue, technology development revenue and development chemical sales, decreased for the first quarter of 2008 to $1,161,754, compared to $1,573,730 for the first quarter of 2007. Universal Display believes these revenue categories, which now combine accounts previously reported separately, better reflect the Company’s business strategies and activities.

Display Bank, a market research company for display, surveyed shipments of AM OLED in the first quarter. The result showed that SDI shipped about 2.56million units, accounting for over 90% of entire market. LG Display produced about 120,000 units. If combining two companies, they accounted for 95% of world AM OLED market in the first quarter.

LG Display has deployed into the development of AMOLED panels. Despite that AMOLED is mostly applied in small-size panels, LG Display said it would continue investing in the large-size segment, with volume production of 32-inch OLED TVs scheduled for 2011.

LG Display will start mass-production of Active Matrix (AM) Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) within this year. CEO Young-soo Kwon of LG Display will report the strategy to CEO Bon-moo Koo of LG Group, which signals that the company plans to make a massive investment for the strategy on the group level.

LG said its supply has improved thanks to the growth of Viewty Pink in sales and the popularity of Korea’s first AM OLED phone.

LG Chem and Universal Display Corporation today announced that they have signed a non-exclusive joint development agreement to accelerate the commercialization of high-performance OLED materials for use in OLED displays and lighting products. The collaboration will focus on combining LG Chem's electron transport and hole injection materials with Universal Display's phosphorescent OLED emitter materials and technology.

“We are pleased with the opportunity to expand our relationship with LG Display beyond the Joint Evaluation Agreement we announced in February 2006,” said Mary Jane Hellyar, President, Kodak Display Business, and Executive Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company. “As we said during our recent investor meeting, OLED is an important technology that will help fuel Kodak’s future growth. Our goal is to see AMOLED panels that have been co-developed continue to appear in the industry during 2008.”

DisplaySearch reports that Samsung SDI drove the market, pushing shipments to 20.2M, which was up 30% Q/Q but down 9% Y/Y. For the year, total revenues grew 6% to US$493.9M (see Table 1) and total shipments grew 8% to 74.7M, according to the DisplaySearch Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report. The report findings also show that the shipment mix is changing, as AMOLEDs had a 9.7% share of total revenues in Q3’07, which jumped to 41% in Q4’07.

Samsung SDI said on Sunday it is engaged in the second phase of investment to sharpen its AM OLED lines.

"The move is intended to double monthly production capacity to 3 million units this year from the current 1.5 million by cutting costs" a Samsung SDI spokesperson said.