Samsung formed Samsung Display (SDC) in 2012 as a merger between Samsung Mobile Display and S-LCD, in an attempt to streamline operations. There are now reports that SDC is now planning to split itself to two companies - one for OLED displays and one for LCDs.

Samsung Display had a tough 2014 (this was true for many other Samsung operations) and posted low operating profits and even a loss in Q3 as it lost its market leadership to LG Display. SDC now 'blames' its LCD business of "pulling down the entire earnings" while OLEDs are highly profitable. The LCD unit is reportedly lowering morale, too.

The European Commission, under its Horizon 2020 programme, launched a new project called Phebe that aims to develop and commercialize TADF OLED emitters. This three-year project's consortium includes Novaled, Astron-FIAMM, TU Dresden, Kaunas University of Technology, Durham University and other companies and universities.

TU Dresden is focusing on material design using theoretical quantum chemical approaches, and KTU is elaborating synthetic schemes for exciplex emitters and intramolecular charge transfer materials and synthesizing the most promising compounds. Durham will perform photophysical characterisation of the new materials from Kaunus and will also be in charge of elucidating the mechanisms of TADF to feed into the theoretical work of TU Dresden. Novaled will provide best-fit transport and doping material sets, technology and expert know-how on stack architecture.

Both LG Display and Samsung Display are currently producing flexible AMOLED displays, and we know that the two companies aim to increase production capacity in the near future. ETNews posted an interesting article that sheds some light on the company's current plans.

So let's start with LGD, that currently produces plastic-based OLEDs in its Gen-4.5 fab, with a monthly capacity of 14,000 substrates (this more than double its capacity in the beginning of 2014). According to ETNews LGD is building a Gen-6 line that will have eventually have a capacity of 15,000 monthly substrates (much larger than the current Gen-4.5 fab of course). It seems that LGD will begin construction in Q3 2015, and the first stage will have a production capacity of 7,500 monthly substrates.

Last year Oculus VR unveiled their 3rd-gen VR HMD development, named Crescent Bay. This HMD adopts an OLED display - but the company now reveals that it actually packs two displays, one for each eye.

Oculus adopted a low-persistence AMOLED display for their 2nd-Gen VR HMD - and it was later discovered that it is the same Super AMOLED display used in the Galaxy Note 3 (complete with the touch layer and all). It was a Full-HD display, which means 1920x1080 - for both eyes. The crescent cove uses two displays, and resolution per eye is probably a lot higher.

UBI Research estimates that the OLED emitting material market will grow to $560 million USD in 2015, a 16% growth from 2014. UBI says that the market will grow by 35% CAGR in coming years, to reach $2.5 billion in 2020.

Korea currently buys over 90% of OLED materials, but China's new players are starting to produce AMOLED displays and China will gain a market share of over 20%.

In  CES 2015, Audi had a nice OLED-based lighting installation at their booth showing the company's logo made from 124 red 70x70 mm OLED panels. Audi finally published a video showing this installation in action:

We do not know who provided the OLEDs for Audi, but it's likely to be Philips, as the two companies have been collaborating on OLED panels for years - in 2012 Audi unveiled three OLED designs, including the rear-mounted "swarm" and in 2013 Audi developed the world's first large-area 3D OLED car rear lighting panels and installed a prototype on an Audi TT. Both of these development was done in collaboration with Philips.

eMagin reported their financial results for Q4 2014. Revenues were $6.7 million (up 10% from Q4 2013), and operating loss was $1.6 million (down from $3.3 million in Q4 2013). eMagin has $6 million in cash balance, and the company expects revenues in 2015 to be $26-29 million.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

eMagin reports good progress with their high-brightness direct-emission microdisplays, the HMD product they are developing in-house and the new backplane technology that is expected to cut power consumption by 30%.

Fraunhofer FEP's COMEDD developed new color-tunable transparent OLED lighting panels. These panels were presented at the LOPE-C exhibition last week, and they looked very nice.

According to the Fraunhofer color tunability is the most wanted feature (after flexibility) by lighting designers. The Fraunhofer uses a stacked approach (unlike Pioneer's stripe-pattered RGB-OLEDs, for example). A stacked approach enabled the Fraunhofer to make the panels both color-tunable and transparent - in any shape.

Amazon.com is now shipping LG's new 55EG9600 curved 55" 4K OLED TV (2015 model). LG did not yet actually officially launch this TV in the US, but it's already shipping from Amazon. The price is $5,499 (and Amazon says that they currently have only 4 in stock).

LG EG9600 OLED TV

The EG9600 OLED TV series offer curved display, 4K resolution, LG's new anti-glare filter, LG's WebOS 2.0 Smart TV OS and quad-core CPUs.

DisplayMate posted an in-depth review of the Galaxy S6 (and GS6 Edge) displays, and they find that this display offers several significant enhancements over the Galaxy S5 display. In fact the GS6's display is the best mobile display ever tested at Displaymate, together with the display used in the Galaxy Note 4.

The most impressive advances over the GS5 are the high density (577 PPI over 432 PPI), higher resolution (2560x1440 vs 1920x1080), a 27% improvement in absolute color accuracy, higher brightness (12% improvement) and higher readability and contrast in high ambient light.