OLED-Info: the OLED experts

In 2015 the EU launched the €4.4 million Flexolighting project (led by Brunel University London) with an aim to develop new materials, processes and methods to overcome current OLED lighting challenges - including lifetime, lighting uniformity and more.

The project's consortium announced that following the project completion and a rethinking of the complete OLED supply chain, it believes that high efficiency OLED lighting panels can be produced at a cost that is on a similar level with LED lighting.

Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) updated its display equipment spending forecasts, and the company now expects OLED spending to recover only in 2022. In June 2018, DSCC estimated that the OLED equipment market will start to recover in 2020.

DSCC says that the whole display market is currently saturated after unprecedented equipment spending in 2016-2018 (an average of $22 billion per year for both LCDs and OLEDs) - for both mobile display and TV display production. Display production is expected to grow at 10% per year from 2018-2020 (as a result of the equipment orders in 2016-2018), and combined with lower operation margins and losses in the display market are causing display makers to be cautious with new capacity plans.

Earlier this month, Nubia demonstrated a smartband that turns into a smartphone - with a foldable OLED display. We assumed that Nubia is using an OLED produced by either BOE or SDC, but it turns out that the producer is China-based Visionox.

A couple of days ago, at the 2018 China Display Technology Conference, Visionox demonstrated some of its latest foldable panels, and announced that the Nubia is using the company's panel. According to our information, the Nubia uses a 3.23" AMOLED display (when open) - and the device will indeed start shipping in China soon (before the end of 2018).

Researchers at the Fraunhofer FEP institute developed a new wearable OLED-based "button" that can be integrated into textiles. The OLEDs can be designed in any shape, be transparent, dimmable and also patterned. There is also a two-color variant.

The Fraunhofer develops say that such elements can be used for fashion trends, branding, safety applications, light therapy and more. The so-called O-Button is based on an OLED deposited on a wafer-thin foil combined with a microcontroller on a conventional circuit board.

US-based supermarket chain Wegmans Food Markets partnered with OLEDWorks to bring OLED lighting installations to select Wegmans stores and work sites. Wegmans says it wants to test better-quality lighting solutions for its customers and employees.

The Wegmans stores will use Acuity Brands' Peerless OLE4 Oleseence suspended luminaries that combine direct-view OLEDs with LEDs. The first initial tests will take place at Wegmans' Pittsford and Henrietta stores and the company's Rochester headquarters (at employee meeting and dining areas). The HQ installations will use Acuity Brands' Trilia installations and the Petal and Limit from Milwaukee-based Visa Lighting.