LG Display's President says that the company will start making small OLED displays next year, in 4.5-Gen and 5.5-Gen lines. They already have customers waiting for those panels. LG's 4.5-Gen plant investment ($225 million) has been announced back in April 2010, and is expected to go online soon. LG hasn't committed yet to a 5.5-Gen, although there were rumors about those new lines, saying these will be used for OLED TVs. But now we hear that LG only plans to use those to produce small displays.

LG do have plans for OLED TVs, but only in 2013. They say that only an 8th-Gen line will make sense for OLED TVs (in order to be price competitive). It'll be interesting to see whether LG will go ahead and introduce a 31" OLED TV in 2011 as rumored (but in any case this will be a pricey TV at $9000).

Hong Meng, the Dupont employee that tried to steal OLED technology trade secrets
and give them to Peking University in Beijing was sentenced yesterday for 14 months in prison. Back in June, Meng pleaded guilty.

Liquidware announced a new open-source development kit for Android. The "Android Modular Gadget Platform" is a modular kit based on open source software and hardware reference designs. The idea is that you can use it for rapid prototyping of Android-based systems. There are 5 main modules: an OLED (4.3" 480x272) display, an ARM processor board, a battery, USB hub and a Wi-Fi board.

The OLED display, by the way, is the same one as used in Liquidware's Linux development kit released in June. The kit is available now for $547.

LEDON OLED Lighting unveiled their first OLED Lighting products back in April 2009, and now we hear that the Luceos modules (which are based on OSRAM's ORBEOS panels) will start shipping next month (as engineering samples). Volume delivery is planned for the beginning of 2011 (LEDON obviously depends on OSRAM's production capacity).

LEDON says that the Luceos modules now include the driving electronics and the whole package is thinner than 4mm. They offer two dimming options: a pulse-width modulation and a complete DMX512 dimming, which should allow for a large-wall of elements setup that can easily address the brightness of each module.

We know that AUO is back into AMOLED production, with plans for a Gen 3.5 factory (which will go in line in 2011). AUO has a daughter company called Wellypower Optronics. Wellypower is Taiwan's number one CCFL maker (mostly used for AUO's LCD backlights) and is also a LED maker.

In a recent PR about a new fluorescent lamp, Wellypower says that they are also producing OLED lighting panels. I'm not sure if that's true, but perhaps the company does have an active OLED program.

Researchers led by John Rogers from the University of Illinois have developed a stretchable/bendable sheets of LEDs and light sensors. They are interested in applications that interface with the human body, and so they prefer inorganic LEDs to OLEDs as they are brighter, more reliable and are more easily made waterproof.

The team has printed an interlaced array of LEDs, on a rigid wafer, then dissolved the top layer of the substrate to release a thin network of LEDs that can be transferred to a flexible, waterproof polymer sheet. Each LED is just 100 microns across (about the width of a human hair) and 2.5 microns thick and is connected to its neighbors by serpentine strands that can accommodate the deformation of stretching and twisting. They managed to put the arrays on aluminum foils, leaves ,sheets of paper and around nylon threads.

A few weeks ago we reported that Wintek is eying the OLED market and looks for a strategic partner. It seems that they have found one in TPK Touch Solutions. Both companies expect AMOLEDs to become a mainstream technology for high-end smartphones. Both companies are experts in Touch Panels and are likely to develop touch-AMOLEDs, so maybe they'll develop something similar to Samsung's Super-AMOLED displays.

It is expected that Wintek will shift existing TFT production equipment to AMOLED production. TPK is already recruiting employees for AMOLED production in Taiwan and China.

The Pantech Laser for AT&T is now shipping for $299 contract-free, or for $0.01 with a new contract. The laser is the "thinnest QWERTY slider" - at least according to AT&T. It's 9.95mm thick, and has a 3.1" touch AMOLED and a 3mp camera.

Buy the Pantech Laser now for $299 (or $0.01 with a new AT&T contract).

Update: we've got a nice video of the TABOLA panels, and also official word that the transparent ones will be available in Q1 2011 as well.

The Fraunhofer IPMS Institute unveiled new OLED lighting panels called TABOLA (the full name is TABOLA OLED Light Tablets), set to be released in Q1 2011. These will be available in three sizes (35 x 75mm², 75 x 75mm² and 150 x 75 mm²), and can be made bottom emitting or transparent. The standard color will be white, but they can also make them in other colors. The tablets can also optionally come with a 'grid' - shaped like a Liana (a vine).

These will be sample panels: the idea is that customers can perform tests and sample designs. This is the same as we've seen from Philips, Osram and Lumiotec: these aren't real commercial panels. The TABOLA will be made at COMEDD, Fraunhofer's Organic Electronics production center in Dresden, Germany (on a Gen-2 production line, structured by screen printing).

Back in January we reported the UDC and Moser Baer will build an OLED Lighting pilot production line, based around Universal Display's PH-OLED technology. $8.3 million was awarded by the DOE for this project (UDC will receive $4 million out of it). The first pilot line (out of two) will begin operation in 2011.

Prototype OLED lamps by UDC

Today we have some new information about this interesting project. The entire investment will be $20 million, with Moser Baer Technologies (the US division of Moser Baer) investing $11.5 million to purchase production equipment. The pilot line will be built in Canandaigua, New York at the Smart System Technology & Commercialization Center (or STC) in the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's (CNSE). STC is in charge of building the cleanroom space for the pilot lines.