Nanomarkets released a new report that covers the opportunity for OLED lighting in the automotive sector (OLED Automotive Lighting - 2014). Nanomarkets forecasts that this market will be significant for OLED lighting makers, and in 2019 almost a million OLED panels will ship for automobiles (over 150,000 luminaires).

In terms of panel revenue, the market will remain very small - a few million dollars in the next couple of years, $9 million by 2017 and about $68 million in 2021. Luminaries revenue will be higher of course: $20 million by 2017 and $135 million by 2021.

According to a report from Korea, LG Electronics (together with LG Display) are launching a massive UHD OLED TV marketing campaign in China. The Chinese National Day holidays started on October 1st and LG already offers their UHD OLED TVs on sale by subscription.

LG Display has been touring 10 major cities in China in the past months, demonstrating how OLEDs are superior in image quality to LCD TVs.

Earlier this wee LG started shipping their 65" 4K OLED TV (65EC9700) in the US for $9,999 (some outlets price it at $6,000 - $8,000 but these aren't shipping any TVs yet so I'm not sure if it's real).

It was pointed out to me that several online retailers in Switzerland now offer the 65" 4K OLED TV for pre-order. And the price is set at only 3,700-3,900 CHF - which is about $3,900 - 4,100. I talked to two of those retailers, and they say that this is the real price. Both do not have the TVs in stock yet but you can pre-order.

A couple of weeks ago it was reported that Dr. Ching Tang and Steven Van Slyke, the two OLED pioneers, are on the short list for this year's Nobel prize in chemistry. The winners were announced, and unfortunately Dr. Tang and Steven Van Slyke were not awarded with the prestigious prize.

The 2014 prize went to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner. The researchers managed to enhance optical microscopy and enable it to obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light, a feat that was believed to be impossible.

According to Korea's It Times, LG will launch their beautiful LG G Watch R smartwatch on October 14th in Korea and major countries. The Watch will cost 352,000 Won ($330) in Korea.

The G Watch R uses a 1.3" (320x320) flexible plastic-based OLED panel, Android Wear OS, a 1.2 Ghz Snapdragon 400 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. It has a 410 mAh battery which should last about a single day.

According to a news report from Japan, Kaneka developed a new OLED panel that achieves a lifetime of 50,000 hours, almost double from the company's current OLEDs. The panel is 8x8 cm in size and 1 mm thick.

Kaneka has a small production line with an annual capacity of about 20,000 panels. The company plans to expand the production capacity with an aim to halve the manufacturing costs. Kaneka plans to achieve OLED sales of ¥50 billion (around $450 million) by 2020.

In past years we heard several reports saying that China's Hon Hai (Foxconn) is starting to develop OLED displays. Now digitimes reports that Tianyi Display Technology (part of the Hon Hai Group) is planning to establish an LTPS fab in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This fab will be used to produce both LCD and OLED displays.

Tianyi reportedly plans to rent an existing 8.5-Gen fab that is owned by Innolux (Hon Hai is a shareholder in Innolux). If all goes well, mass production is expected to begin in late 2015. It's likely that they will start with LTPS-LCD production and move to OLEDs later (this is the plan currently underway by several display makers in China). This is a bit confusing as this is a large (8.5-gen) fab that is probably geared to TV panel production and not small displays for mobile devices (which is Foxconn's reported production goal).

Samsung released preliminary estimates for Q3 2014, saying that sales are down 20% compared to a Q3 2013, and profits are down almost 60%. Samsung says that mobile phone shipments increased slightly, but high-end phone sales are down.

Samsung also reported decreased OLED shipments - because of the lower demand for high-end mobile phones. The company will "continue to enhance competitiveness by continuously strengthening technological innovation and expanding its customer base". They are also preparing new smartphone lineups featuring new materials and innovative designs".

Several OLED markets are heating up - OLED TVs, Flexible OLEDs, wearables, OLED lighting, the automotive market... Barry Young from the OLED Association, one of the world's top OLED experts, was kind enough to offer his views and opinion on the OLED market.

Q: What is your expectation from the OLED TV market in the next 1-3 years? Will LG be the only player (and if so what will be their capacity) or will Samsung and perhaps other enters the market too?

LG chose to implement the metal oxide/White OLED approach and has succeeded, where Samsung’s choice of LTPS/Small Mask Scanning (SMS) has proven too expensive to pursue even with ~80% yields.

Microsoft research propose a new OLED power consumption technique (which they call FingerShadow) that uses local-dimming for screen areas covered by user fingers. Because OLED pixels only consume power when lit, this is a clever way to save power when people interactive with their smartphones or tablets.

According to Microsoft, they did a short study (10 users) and on average 11.14% of the screen is covered by fingers - which means FingerShadow can achieve a power saving of 5-22% (average 12.96%) with almost no overhead. Clever idea there Microsoft.