LG hosted their Tech Show 2013 in India yesterday, and the company announced that it plans to introduce its OLED TVs in India in the second half of 2013. Currently LG are offering thier OLED TVs in Korea only (for $10,000, they have sold only around 200 units so far). The TVs will arrive in the UK in July, and the US probably in H2 2013 as well.

LG's 55" 55EM9700 is a Full-HD OLED TV that features 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio and fast response time (1,000 times faster than LCD according to LG). The panel is only 4mm thick and weighs only 3.5Kg. The OLED panel is based on LG Display's Oxide-TFT white-OLED with color filters (WRGB) OLED panel.

LG Display reported their financial results for Q1 2013. The company saw a small operating profit of about $135 million. It's an improvement over last year, but it's down 74% from Q4 2012. LG Display was mainly hurt by a seasonal slowdown and weaker sales to Apple.

Regarding LG's OLED TV, the company still refers to OLEDs as their "ultimate differentiated product", and says that once their new OLED TV fab will reach 26,000 monthly substrates (still scheduled for the middle of 2014) it will "positively impact the profitability", as OLEDs will carry a higher margin than LCDs.

DisplaySearch's Europe TV market research director, Paul Gray, says that currently OLED TV yields at LG are still very low - at about 10%. Things will improve, but it'll be slow. According to Paul, DisplaySearch now estimates that in 2014 only 300,000 OLED TVs will be sold worldwide:

This is drastically lower then their DisplaySearch's October 2012 estimates of about 1.8 million OLED TVs in 2014. In December 2012 the company said that LG and Samsung will never release commercial Full-HD OLED TVs and will wait to launch 4K ones in 2014. Of course LG did finally launch their 55" Full-HD 55EM9700 OLED TV, although sales are currently very low so you may say this isn't really commercial yet.

US carriers will start shipping the GS4 this week. AT&T will probably be the first one as they aim to start shipping on Tuesday (April 23). Most other carriers (including Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular) will ship a week layer (April 30). it will be very interesting to see the market's reaction to Samsung's new flagship phone.

The GS4 features a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1280, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display, an Octacore 1.6Ghz Exynos CPU (some models use a Quadcore 1.9Ghaz Qualcomm CPU), 2GB of memory, 13 mp camera and a 2,600mAh battery - all this while being a smaller and lighter than the GS3. The GS4 includes a lot of new software features and special UI controls, include the Adapt Display which allows extensive display calibration adjustments.

The OLED Association posted an interesting article today in which they say that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 3 phone (phablet?) will use a YOUM display (a plastic-based unbreakable flexible OLED). Samsung will unveil the new phone at IFA 2013 (September) and will launch it in Q4 2013.

Galaxy Note II

Samsung YOUM displays use a plastic (Polyimide) substrate, an LTPS backplane, direct-emission RGB patterned OLED sub pixels and thin-film encapsulation (using Vitex's multi-layer technology). It's not known yet what the size and resolution of this particular display, but the OLED-A estimates it will be at least 5.9" in size, but probably will not achieve Full-HD resolution. The Note 3 will also not use a curved display.

Merck inaugurated their new Taiwanese Technology Development Center, which will develop new material technologies in collaboration with local companies. The main focus of this new center will be OLED materials. Other areas of research will include flexible displays, LED lighting and 3D techniques. Merck already has an OLED R&D lab in Korea.

Merck's OLED product portfolio covers transport materials as well as emitters and other functional layers. The company is focusing on soluble OLED materials, and they say that the performance gap between vapor and printable materials is closed in R&D. Merck OLED materials are "used commercially in many products on the market".

OLEDWorks have successfully completed its Series A funding round from private investors. While we do not know the exact amount, this money will (according to the company) enable them to start producing "low-cost" OLED lighting panels.

OLEDWorks is building an OLED lighting manufacturing fab in Rochester, NY, and they say that they will offer low-cost OLEDs through the use of equipment and process innovation. Next week at LightFair 2013 they will present their first OLED prototypes, which they plan to start shipping in the second half of 2013.

OLEDWorks' first panels will be 4x4 inch (12x12 cm) in size - and they will be efficient (over 45 lm/W). The company will offer two options: OLED panels on glass and on metal. The panels be thin (under 3 mm) and will come in six color variants - red, blue, green, amber and three white color options (3000K, 3500K and 4000K).

EMDEOLED is a German company that is developing an OLED based light bulb for residential lighting in collaboration with the University of Technology Braunschweig. Basically the idea is that using an inner-coating process, they are creating a replacement for regular bulbs in which the glass is coated from the inside. They have developed their first prototypes, shown below (unfortunately they did not disclose any technical details):

EMDEOLED's OLEDs are ITO-free, and they have actually developed two prototypes - one with PLEDs and one with SM-OLEDs. The company says that the inner coating results in a very high material yield (and so hopefully will be cheaper than flat OLEDs). The OLED bulbs are also easy to seal as the glass actually protects the OLEDs from the outside.

Last week Sony unveiled new 30" and 56" 4K OLED panels, slated for release in 2014, and they also updated their TRIMASTER EL professional OLED monitors with the new A Series which sport an improved OLED panel. Now I have some new information on Sony's new OLEDs.

So first of all, that 56" panel is the same panel shown at CES, made in cooperation with AU Optronics. Sony do plan to use it for their professional video division, but it's still too early for any delivery dates or price information.

Beneq announced that together with Fraunhofer's COMEDD, they have developed a new R&D thin film ALD encapsulation system for 200×200 mm OLED and OPV substrates. This system is now available - and in a few months they will deliver the first one to COMEDD.

The new encapsulation system is based on a cross-flow reactor, which has been optimized for the shortest possible cycle time, even at low processing temperatures, such as under 100 Celsius. This allows for rapid OLED prototyping and enables process scale-up for large areas and high throughput. Beneq's new system can be used as a stand-alone system, and it can also be integrated with an MBraun glove box.