LG Display reported their financial results for 4Q 2012, with $299 million in profit - thanks to mobile phones launches by key customers including Apple. LGD did warn though that the earnings will decrease in Q1 2013 as iPhone demand wanes.

The company also commented about their OLED TV production plans. LGD is planning to convert their Gen-8 fab from LCD to OLED TV production. They haven't decided how many of the fab lines will be converted, but the decision to convert some of the capacity did took place- which is good news.

There are reports that BOE, who's facing serious AMOLED production issues (especially on large OLED TV panels) with very low yields has reached out to Taiwanese company for help. BOE is seeking to collaborate on AMOLED R&D, and if the reports are true they probably contacted either AU Optronics or Innolux or both.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

According to reprots, BOE started construction of their 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab in Ordos (Inner Mongolia) which will produce 54K substrates a month. According to some earlier reports, the fab cost is estimated at $3.44 billion. BOE's plan is apparently to first start with LTPS LCD and only in 2014 start producing AMOLED panels as well. BOE is also developing OLED ink-jet printing processes.

DisplayBank says that they expect the OLED TV market to grow to 72 million units in 2020 - and command 64% of the 45" and larger global TV market. DisplayBank says that they expect the production cost of OLED TVs falling quickly which will greatly enhance the market competitiveness.

The OLED TV market will start slowly, and it's anyone's guess how fast (if at all) it'll grow. LG themselves estimate that the OLED TV market in 2013 will be very small, but they expect it to grow to 600,000 - 700,000 units in 2014 and 3 million units in 2015 (about 1% of the TV market). DisplaySearch is more optimistic than LG, saying that the OLED TV market in 2014 will reach almost 2 million units, and in 2015 it will reach almost 5 million units.

Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting (PIOL) unveiled new OLED lighting panels and also revealed the company's roadmap till 2018. The company currently produces 100x100 mm panels, and they are now showing new 150x50 mm and 200x50 mm panels that will be released in the spring of 2013.

The new panels will offer the same performance as PIOL's current panels: 10,000 lifetime (LT70), 30 lm/W and color temperatures of 3000K, 4000K and 5000K. PIOL confirmed that the only difference to the current panels is the shape. PIOL's panels have a high CRI (over 90) and they mostly target museums and exhibitions (some of the panels have already been used in at least two museums: Kyoto's MOMAK museum and Panasonic's own Shiodome museum).

Samsung Display announced that they have produced 300 million AMOLED panels since mass production started in January 2007. Samsung production rate is accelerating: it took them 53 months to produce the first 100 million panels, 11 months to produce the next 100 million and only 7 months to produce another 100 million.

Remember that the OLED capacity has increased faster than that because the average AMOLED panel size is increasing all the time. The current production rate is about 470,000 OLED panels a day.

A couple of weeks ago we reported that LG Display will make a final decision on its OLED TV panel production capacity investment by early February. According to KoreaTimes, LGD has decided to go ahead with an ambitious plan (an "all-out effort") to dominate the OLED TV market. This new report correlates with earlier KoreaTimes reports.

LGD's 2013 investment will be 3.8 trillion won ($3.6 billion USD), and most of it will be used to increase LG's OLED TV capacity and improve the technology, followed by investments into Flexible OLEDs and Oxide-TFT LCDs. The investment amount is about the same as in 2012, but this time the focus is different.

According to Digitimes, Samsung's upcoming "next-gen" AMOLED panels will use a new pixel layout. Reportedly, Samsung are developing hexagon and diamond shaped pixels. This means that Samsung will increase the resolution but the picture will suffer due to jagged pixel artifacts and blurring. It's probably that at such high pixel density this won't actually be noticed, but still.

In the Galaxy Note II Samsung introduced a new sub-pixel scheme, an RGB matrix in which the blue subpixel is twice as large as the red and green ones - which achieved 267 PPI. Obviously the new 4.99" Full-HD displays have a much higher PPI (440). I assumed Samsung will use the same PenTile arrangement used in most of their AMOLED displays.

Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company based in Germany, working on high performance OLED materials. Back in April 2012 we posted our (third) interview with Merck's OLED unit VP, Dr. Udo Heider.

It seems that the soluble OLED materials market is heating up with recent announcements on printable OLED advances. So we asked Dr. Heider to give us a short updates on the happenings at Merck. As always, Merck are quite discreet...

Fluxim launched a new all-in-one measurement system called paios for the characterization of organic devices (OLEDs and OPVs). Paios is used for extracting material and device parameters such as the charge carrier mobility by performing a range of dynamic electrical measurement techniques including CELIV, impedance spectroscopy and transient space-charge-limited currents.

Paios complements the company's setfos device simulation software. Fluxim says that by using paios and comparing measurement and simulation results, crucial parameters may be extracted and physical models can be validated - and this leads to more predictive simulation results.

LG has just launched the 55" 55EM9700 OLED TV in Korea (for $10,000), and the company now says that it plans to expand its OLED TV lineup with 40" and 70" models. The larger models will be marketed in the US while the smaller ones will be sold in Korea and Europe. 

LG also has actual plans to release the 55" curved OLED TV unveiled at CES. The EA9800 curved TV features an Oxide-TFT WRGB Full-HD OLED panel (like LG's regular OLED TV). It's made from Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Plastic (CFRP). According to LG, the curved screen "removes any hint of visual distraction to maximize the viewing experience".