Tokyo Electron announced that it is now accepting orders for the Elius 2500 OLED inkjet printing system. This system can produce OLEDs on 8th gen glass substrates.

TEL started collaborating with Seiko Epson on OLED manufacturing technology in 2010. The companies signed an agreement to jointly-develop OLED display manufacturing technology that will integrate Epson's inkjet printing method and TEL's production equipment. So after about 3.5 years, we finally see the first product that resulted from this collaboration.

Pioneer announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". The production technology was co-developed by Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical. The panels will be distributed by MC Pioneer OLED Lighting Corporation.

The two companies currently produce a single module that is 92.4 x 92.4 mm in size (active area 76x76 mm) and 4.3 mm thick. It weighs 42 grams. The color temperature is 2870K and the maximum luminance is 3,000 cd/m². Unfortunately they did not reveal the efficiency and lifetime of this OLED.

Konica Minolta announced that it is starting to construct an OLED lighting fab at Konica Minolta Kofu Site (Chuo-shi, Yamanashi Prefecture). This fab will mass produce flexible OLED lighting panels (on plastic substrates). The construction will end in the summer of 2014 and mass production will commence in the fall of 2014.

Konica Minolta says that it reached the conclusion that light, bendable and durable OLED lighting panels on plastic substrates will "deliver new values to customers not only in general lighting and architecture sectors but also in electric appliances and automobile sector". Konica will invest ¥10 billion (almost $100 million) in the new fab.

Aixtron installed an R&D "cluster" at their clean-room that demonstrates the core processes used to produce organic semiconductors (deposition of OLEDs and flexible electronics). This new system offers industrial customers (and research partners) an integrated environment that shows off the company's core technologies.

The cluster includes several process modules and supports Gen-1 substrates (200x200 mm). The cluster is built around three OVPD systems embedded in an automated cluster environment and supplemented by various process modules and relevant infrastructure.

LG's GALLERY OLED TV (the 55EA8800) finally arrived in the US - Amazon sells it now for $7,499. This TV is a wall-mountable flat Full-HD 55" OLED TV. It uses the same panel as LG's 55EM9700 but besides being wall-mountable, the GALLERY TV also offers 2.2 channel sound system in the frame using LG's Canvas Speakers. The TV includes a special Gallery Mode that shows high-res images of famous paintings.

By the way, the price of LG's curved 55EA9800 keeps changing. On March 2nd I posted that the price dropped from $6,999 to $5,999. Then it was back up to $6,999. But today Amazon lists the OLED TV again for $5,999.

Over the past few months we heard several reports that Samsung will soon release AMOLED tablets. Most of these reports suggested that the tablets will have screen sized 8" and 10.5" and will be premium but mass-produced tablets. Now the SamMobile blog says they confirmed that Samsung is indeed developing an OLED tablet that will use a 2560x1600 display.

The screen size itself is unknown yet, but it will probably indeed be between 8" to 10". According to SamMobile, there will be three variants for this table (Wi-Fi, 3G and LTE) and they even know the model numbers (SM-T800, SM-T801, SM-T805).

LG Electronics introduced their 2014 TV lineup in Korea - unveiling a total of 68 new models. The company will launch 77", 65" and 55" OLED TVs - some of which will feature 4K UHD resolution. The company did not yet announce prices and availability, but they did say that they will start releasing the new TVs in key markets later this month.

Those OLED TVs were already unveiled at CES 2014. Back in January LG said that the 77" curved UHD OLED TV, the 77EC9800, will launch in Q2 2014 for $29,999. It'll be very interesting to know the prices of the 65" and 55" 4K models. Some (or all?) of LG's new OLED TVs will feature a new power reduction technology called Adaptive SVDD - an external compensation technology that decreased the power consumption by 30.6%.

eMagin reported their Q4 2013 financial results. Revenues in the quarter were $6.1 million (as already announced) - down from $8.3 million in Q4 2012. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $2.1 million (compared to an earnings of $1.6 million last year).

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

For the whole 2013, eMagin reached $28 million in revenues (down from $30.6 in 2012). Product sales actually increased a little bit from 2013, but contract revenue dropped 62%. Operating loss in 2013 was $5.2 million. As of December 31, 2013, eMagin had about $11 million in cash and equivalents (down from $13.4 million in December 2012).

Earlier this week, a fire broke out in a factory that produces PCBs for the Galaxy S5. It 287 firefighters to finally stop the fire after 6 hours - and it is estimated that over $1 billion in equipment and components has been destroyed.

The factory was contacted by Samsung to manufacture PCBs for the GS5, and this may delay Samsung's launch or hinder the initial production volumes. Samsung announced that it uses several sources for the PCBs and that the fire will not effect the production by a huge margin. Hopefully the company will be able to launch their new flagship on April 11 as promised.

eMagin said they received a notification to stop shipments to three customers pending review of a possible wire bonding problem in a microdisplay. These customers (who supply systems to government programs that include eMagin OLED displays) have indicated that they will not accept eMagin displays until the issue has been resolved.

eMagin believes that upon completion of its review and with concurrence of the applicable customers, anticipated shipments of the Company’s products to such customers will resume shortly.