We're still not sure whether Chimei Innolux (CMI) is producing AMOLED panels or not - but according to Digitimes the company is showing AMOLED panels at FPD China 2011. This seems to be a good sign.

According to their financial presentation, CMI has two OLED plants planned (A Gen-3.5 LTPS in Jhunan and a Gen-5.5 IGZO-TFT fab in Tainan).

Fluxim released version 3.2 of their SETFOS simulation software, used to study OLED and organic solar cells (OPVs). The new version includes several new improvements for OLED simulation:

• An enhanced nonlinear least-square fitting algorithm for general parameter extraction tasks, providing quantitative information about the quality of the fits:correlation coefficients for the fit parameters, confidence ellipses and intervals.
• An improved steady-state solver for the charge drift-diffusion equations, capable of simulating extended density of states for free and trapped carriers in multiple layers.
• A seamless coupling of electrons, excitons and photons in a single, comprehensive simulation software, taking into account the influence of the optical environment on the exciton dynamics.

AUO is still on track to start producing AMOLED displays soon, but the company's chairman KY Lee said today that they are still need to reduce the material cost and improve the efficiency of thier panels.

According to reports Microsoft decided to stop developing their Zune music players - which were never a big success. The second generation Zune-HD was actually considered a very good device - but it never managed to sell in big enough numbers for Microsoft.

Zune HD

The Zune-HD is a flash based Wi-Fi PMP capable of HD radio and video and had a 3.3" 480x272 multi-touch AMOLED display. It is still shipping - $350 for 64GB, 215$ 32GB and 157$ for the 16GB version.

Update: In Janaury 2013 LG indeed announced that their 55" EM9700 OLED TV will start shipping in February 2013 for $10,000 in Korea

During their 2011 Annual general shareholders meeting LG Display announced that they plan to start producing OLED TVs in 2013. LG is already starting to construct their pilot Gen-8 AMOLED line. They plan to start pilot production in late 2011, but real production will only start in 2013. Even so it won't be "mass production" as this is just a pilot line with a small capacity.

LG 31-inch OLED TV prototype

In their OLED TVs, LG will use a white-OLED with color filter design (WOLED-CF, or WRGB). This technology was developed at Kodak and is now owned by LG. WRGB TVs are less efficient than direct-emission OLEDs (because the color filters absorb some of the light) but they are easier to fabricate because there's no need to pattern subpixels.

Digitimes posted an interesting update on Sony, Samsung and LG's OLED TV plans. They say that Samsung plans to begin test production of 32" OLED TVs in the second half of 2012. The company will start to invest in Gen-8 OLED TV production lines in 3Q 2011.

LG will be able to make 30" OLED TVs be the end of 2011, and (as we know already) plans a Gen-8 fab for 2011. Sony meanwhile seems to be focusing on professional OLED monitors, and doesn't have any active consumer OLED TV program.

Yesterday we posted Ecosummit TV's video interview with Novaled's co-founder and chief scientist, and today we found another great interview, this time with Harry Boehme, Novaled's CFO. Harry confirms that the company had €11.2 million in revenues in 2010. He also reveals that Novaled are selling materials to a large OLED display maker in Asia - which is Samsung (while not saying this specifically due to NDA, harry admits that they are selling to the 'only AMOLED maker').

Harry also discusses Novaled's technology and markets (they target OLED displays, OLED lighting and organic PV) and estimates that OLEDs will have a 20% share in the flat-panel display market within 5 years. The interview also includes a short visit to Novaled's chemistry lab with with Dr. Mike Zoellner, a project leader.

Back in September 2000, Universal Display (UDC) licensed 74 OLED related patents from Motorola. Today the company announced that it will purchase those patents, and so terminate the license agreement and stop paying royalties to Motorola.

Here's a full list of those patents:

Japan's OLED lighting fair started in March 8th, and we got some interesting OLED Lighting news. NEC lighting is showing several OLED lighting lamps using their upcoming panels - which will be 10x10cm ones offering 60lm/W efficiency - which is actually very good. The company plans to commercialize them in fiscal 2011 (which ends of March 2012). NEC is using UDC's PHOLED materials, which explains the relativly high efficiency.

NEC OLED lighting

Panasonic Electric Works is another company that's developing OLED lighting panels based on UDC's materials, and now we hear that they too plan to commercialize their panels in 2011. We don't have any technical details on those panels yet.

Update: Here's another interview with Novaled's CFO, in which he confirms the €11 million 2010 revenue figure, and also reveals that their customer is Samsung.

Ecosummit TV posted a nice interview with Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, Novaled's co-founder and chief scientist. Jan discusses the company's business, technology, OLED doping and other interesting topics.

In the video description in YouTube they say that Novaled had €11 million in revenues in 2010. The company reported around $8 million in revenue in 2008, so this makes sense. We posted our own interview with Gerd Guenther, Novaled's marketing chief a couple of months ago.