July 2008

NKK Switches, the world's leading designer and manufacturer of innovative electromechanical switching devices, today announced the availability of its new OLED SmartSwitch and SmartDisplay high resolution programmable switches. These switches offer many advantages over conventional LCD programmable switches; including higher contrast and more brilliant pictures, 180 degree viewing angles, full colors, lower power consumption, faster response times and no backlighting requirements.

Universal Display Corp has entered into an OLED Technology License and Technical Assistance Agreement and a Commercial OLED Material Supply Agreement with Kyocera Corporation.

Kyocera will have rights to make and sell OLED display products based on UDC's PHOLED IP and materials.

GE released a nice presentation video, and it's all about OLEDs, and how they may be used in the future for lighting. Not many technical details, it focuses more on possible applications, which are rather nice:

The last we heard from GE about OLED lighting was in March 2008 , when they Demonstrated the World's First ''Roll-to-Roll'' Manufactured OLEDs.

iRiver is now taking pre-orders in Korea with the iRiver SPINN. As a reminder, this is an A/V player with a 3.2" AMOLED display (480 x 372). It's also apparently a touchscreen OLED. 

The SPINN costs about 260$ for the 4GB, and 300$ for the 8GB version.

Read more here (Engadget)

TechRadar is reporting that Panasonic is set to make 40" OLED TV panels (at first it was 37"). The "unofficial word" is that they will convert their Kyoto Semiconductor R&D lab into an OLED TV factory. It will cost "several dozen billion yen" which means 300M$ and upwards.

They report that at first Panasonic will make a 20" OLED prototype - next spring, which will be followed by mass producing the 40" TVs.

Panasonic doesn't want to stay behind Sony, which is already selling 11" OLED TVs, and is "awfully close" to releasing a 27" model (shown right).

In July 2008, I had the chance of interviewing Elijah Ebo, manager of product division at Densitron. Densitron has been in the displays industry for over 30 years and is well known for offering custom display and complete product design. The company sold the other 2 division it had, gaming and Digital signage, a couple of years ago and the management decided to re-focus on displays.

Elijah got his degree in Surrey University, and worked at Vertu (Nokia's luxury mobile phone brand) and at Philips before joining Densitron, to be the Product Division manager - managing a team of technical display experts at Densitron and supporting design activities with their customers.

A week ago we reported that TMDisplay is to spend 140M$ on new production lines, setting the output at 1M units per month.

The last news from the company says that the output will be 1.5M units per month, and production will begin at October.

Digitimes reports that AUO said that they are indeed considering re-opening their OLED production lines (as reported a month ago, here in OLED-Info). HB Chen, vice-Chairman and CEO of AUO said that although AUO will not re-open the production line in 2008, the company will showcase its AMOLED developments in Yokohama, Japan in October this year.

AUO already has the equipment and technologies to mass-produce small-size OLED panels, but will continue to observe the market before moving to develop large-size panels, Chen noted.

Read more here (digitimes) 

During this SSL Product Development Project, Universal Display and its subcontractor, Armstrong, will develop and deliver an integrated ceiling illumination system that is targeted to exceed the DOE’s 2010 performance goals. The white OLED lighting panels will be designed and fabricated by Universal Display using its high-efficiency phosphorescent OLED technology. The panels will then be integrated by Armstrong into its innovative TechZone™ open-architecture ceiling system. In addition, the team will deliver a white OLED lighting panel fabricated on a thin metallic foil substrate using Universal Display’s UniversalPHOLED and other OLED technologies, to demonstrate the commercial product potential of white OLEDs with a flexible form factor.

A tremendous opportunity exists for white OLED lighting products, based on their potential energy efficiency and environmental advantages as compared to existing products, stated Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Display. Through its Solid State Lighting program, the U.S. Department of Energy has been a very strong proponent of white OLED lighting, and it has been instrumental in helping to drive the performance of this technology to where it is today. With white OLED performance rapidly approaching commercial targets, we are delighted to be collaborating with Armstrong World Industries, a leading developer and manufacturer of innovative building systems, to develop and demonstrate a novel product concept using white OLEDs. Together, our goal is to make energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly, and economical white OLED lighting a commercial reality.

Armstrong is pleased to be able to support the kind of leading edge effort in energy efficiency and environmental sustainability represented by Universal Display’s solid-state OLED lighting research program, stated Stephen J. Senkowski, Executive Vice President of Armstrong World Industries and Chief Executive Officer of its Building Products Division. The ability to couple ground-breaking developments in the field of lighting with the proven benefits of commercially accepted building systems like TechZone™ is a key goal of this DOE supported project.

Through the use of its UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent OLED technology, Universal Display recently announced a major research milestone for white OLEDs of 102 lm/W. Compared to incandescent bulbs with less than 15 lm/W and fluorescent lamps typically from 60 - 90 lm/W, this research result is a significant advance toward achievement of the full set of performance requirements for commercial products.

Power-efficient white OLEDs may reduce energy consumption dramatically and lower the amount of by-product heat, further reducing energy and environmental burdens. White OLEDs are also environmentally benign, especially compared to mercury-containing fluorescent lamps and newer compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). Combining these important ‘green’ features with a very thin, lightweight and durable form factor, white OLEDs offer significant new lighting design opportunities, such as the one envisioned in this Armstrong ceiling system concept.

Global AMOLED Panel Shipment Trend

• Shipments of 4.34 million units in 2Q, 2008 which portray rapid growth from the starting point of 4Q, 2007
• Samsung SDI to dominate shipments, about 90% of the entire 2Q, 2008 shipments
• 2H, 2008 shipments expected to be minimum 10 million units, possibly more than 12 million units

AMOLED, so called "Dream Display" panel global shipments recorded 7.1 million units during the first half of 2008 and forecasted to be more than 10 million units during the latter half of 2008.

Samsung SDI is known for dominating the AMOLED shipment area and analyzed to have 90% share of the entire 2Q, 2008 shipments. Taiwan's CMEL, LG Display and Sony are known to gradually increase their shipments.

Displaybank forecasted rather smooth AMOLED market entry situation as many mobile phone manufacturers are either applied or plan to apply AMOLED in their mobile phone models and many AMOLED demands appear in Digital Camera, Digital Photo Frame, PMP and Indicating Devices.

Displaybank expects 3 million units per month in shipments will be possible in early 2009.