Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is showing several new flexible display prototypes - AMOLEDs, roll-to-roll cholesterol liquid crystal displays and electrowetting displays.
ITRI 4.1" Fleixble AMOLED prototype
ITRI's AMOLED is a 4.1" panel, made on plastic substrate. The prototype is monochrome, but it can be made with color materials.
When 2008 began we thought that this will finally be the 'year of the OLED'. Sony, Samsung, CMEL and LG geared up to start making AMOLEDs, which huge investments (over 1 Billion dollars, in total). Other companies such as Toshiba and Panasonic also joined the OLED camp.
We saw the first bunch of gadgets using the new 2" to 4" AMOLED displays (most of them made by Samsung SDI) - mobile phones (such as the Nokia N85), A/V players from iRiver and Cowon and other devices.
In the OLED light world, we had the world's first OLED lamp released by OSRAM, and advancements were announced almost every week - from OSRAM, GE, Kodak, Konica-Minolta, Philips, UDC and more. Companies predicted they will start selling OLED lamp products in 2009-2011 - Philips even started shipping product samples to 'designers'.
Towards the end of 2008, the tone was less enthusiastic. The economy is shaken, and companies are less optimistic - Samsung are not so sure about OLED TVs any more, LG and Panasonic seem to be more 'cautious', Samsung SDI's AMOLED sales has dropped and a couple of companies have been closed (MED, OLED-T).
Our guess is that the small 'mobile' AMOLEDs will continue to grow strong. It is most likely that we'll see dozens of new A/V players, mobile phones and digital cameras that include such displays. The biggest market is probably mobile phones, and hopefully Nokia and Samsung will continue to introduce new models with AMOLEDs, with other companies will have to start doing the same - Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG. We're all still waiting for Apple to make an OLED iPod or iPhone - who knows, they might finally try it in 2009...
At the end of 2009 CMEL introduced the largest available AMOLED - 7.6", as used in Kodak's 999$ photo frame. The price of these panels (currently very high) will probably drop quickly, and in 2009 we'll see more devices using those panels.
In May 2008 Sony announced that they'll release a 27" OLED TV (the XEL-2?) within 12 months - which means by May 2009. Samsung are working on 14.1" and 31" displays. The 14.1" ones are for laptops, which will enjoy the power efficiency and might accept the higer prices of the OLEDs. Samsung said these will be officialy announced at CES 2009 (January), and will be available by 2010. They might be able to even make them in 2009...
In 2008 we saw some pretty cool new OLED prototypes - flexible thin displays, foldable phones, transparent 'windows' with embedded OLEDs, and even a 40" High-Def OLED TV by Samsung. Even though these are exciting, it's hard to believe that any flexible displays will become available in 2009 - it will take several more years for this technology to mature.
We predict that the most exciting news will come from the field of white-light OLEDs. Hopefully the quick advances in OLED white light efficiency will continue during 2009. If Philips will hold true to their word, they will start selling products in 2009, with GE following suit at 2010.
So is it likely that real, commercially priced OLED lamps will be available? Will 2009 be the year of the OLED light bulb? Our bet is to wait till 2010... but we'll be happy to be wrong on that one.
We'd love to hear your own predictions - tell us what you think will happen in 2009!
Plextronics announced today that its conductive ink has been shown to improve the performance of certain PLED devices.
Two years ago we reported about a new treatment for skin cancer using OLEDs, being researched in the UK. Now we are hearing that it is progressing well. A new company called Lumicure was encorporated, to develop the technology. They got around 5M$ VC funding in early 2008, and are "making excellent progress".
Lumicure hopes to get their product on the market at Q4 2009. They are also working on a light-source for curing acne.
In october we reported about two new AMOLED phones - KDDI W63H (Hitachi) and W63CA (Casio), both in the KDDI au range. Those phones use a 3.1" WVGA AMOLED (480x800) made by Samsung SDI.
The phones are now selling.
The research team at GE has put together a cool OLED christmas tree. The OLEDs were made by a roll-to-roll fabrication. The OLED is 6 inch wide, by 15 feet. Here's a nice video of the tree:
Anit Duggal, who's leading GE OLED program said - We’re making great progress toward hitting the metrics needed to successfully introduce OLED lighting to market. We continue to make steady advances in efficiency, lifetime, and lighting-quality using device structures that can be made with roll-to-roll manufacturing, so that we’ll be able to introduce OLED lighting at an affordable price.
We also got a nice high resolution picture of the tree:
Samsung Electronics has developed a new Amorphous Oxide TFT technology, which can be used widely to next generation display semiconductor devices - LCDs, AMOLEDs, solar cells, LEDs and sensors, flexible and transparent displays, and more.
Samsung changed the existing single channel structure into channel structure, which resulted in faster electron movement (3 times faster than existing tech). This means that the screen quality is improved.
Here's a nice video review of Cowon's S9 Curve - with its 3.3" (480x272) touch AMOLED display:
The S9 curve has a touchscreen 3.3" (480x272) AMOLED display. It also has a 500Mhz dual-core CPU, Bluetooth, FM radio, TV out and a USB2 connector. The player will be released in the US in December 19th.
Amazon is now listing (and shipping!) the Kodak OLED wireless digital photo frame. Just in time for the holiday shopping... The frame costs 999.95$
As a reminder, the display is a 7.6" AMOLED panel, made by CMEL. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, 800x480 resolution, a white-to-black contrast of 30,000:1.
A week ago CNet reviewed the frame, and said the colors are brilliant and the image is sharp.
The Kodak OLED frame at amazon
So the 2008 holiday season is almost here - and obviously you'd like a new gadget with an OLED display. So what are your options?
The top choice will have to be Sony's XEL-1, the world's first OLED-TV. The 11" XEL-1 (960x540) is only 3mm thin. The contrast and colors are great. The only problem? it costs around 2,500$...
Our second choice is an OLED keyboard. Here you can customize the keys to your liking, this is very useful. Art.Lebedev's Optimus keyboard (where all the keys are OLEDs) costs 1,500$. There are cheaper options - like the 3-keyed Optimus-Mini, or UnitedKeys' new 260$ board (only has 9 OLED keys, though).
During 2008 the first OLED photo frames arrived. The top of the bunch is Kodak's 999$ wireless frame, which has a beautiful 7.6" panel. Digital Foci also sells smaller frames (up to 2.8") - which are much more reasonable priced.
Audio/Video players have sported OLED displays for years now. There are a few new players that have large AMOLED displays. We like Cowon's S9 Curve - with its 3.3" touchscreen AMOLED. The iRiver SPINN was recently released as well - this one has a 3.2" display (also touchscreen, by the way). If you want smaller players, there are literally dozens of models with OLEDs.
Mobile phones are the second largest OLED market. If you live in the US, the best option is Nokia's N85 with a 2.6" display. In korea and Japan there are many more phones from LG, KDDI, Samsung and others that has beautiful large OLEDs, most of them announced in the past few months.
Interestingly, if you want a digital camera with an OLED, you don't have many choices - even though It has been years since Kodak introduced the world's first camera with an OLED. There's Samsung NV24HD pocket camera, and some very high-end cameras with OLEDs, and that's that. Perhaps the fact that OLED displays currently are not too great in sunlight makes camera makers a bit hasitant to use them.
Finally, if you really want to impress your friends, you can get one of Ingo Maurer's OLED lamps. They will only make 25 of them, and we heard the price is 25,000euro...
So, what will it be? We'd love to get your comments - tell us what is your favorite OLED gadget, and which one you'll be most happy to have these holidays.
