In July 2014 LG Display announced its intention to enter the OLED automotive display market, with flexible and transparent OLED solutions. Now the company demonstrates new 12.3" Full-HD Flexible OLED panels especially for the automotive market:

Back in 2014 LGD said they already signed contracts with several German automobile makers - it'll be interesting to see how soon will such display be adopted in commercial cars.

So we might as well get used to this - OLEDs have arrived at the laptop market. Dell's Alienware announced their latest gaming laptop, the Alienware OLED 13 R2 - and it uses a 13" 2560x1440 AMOLED display.

The Alienware OLED 13 laptop will ship in April 2015 starting at $1,499. It's quite similar to the LCD Alienware 13 R2, just with an OLED instead of the LCD (which has a higher 3200x1800 resolution). The LCD model currently starts at $1,068 - this means that the OLED premium is about $450 - but then again it may also have higher specs, so it is difficult to compare. Alienware themselves says that the OLED model will cost exactly the same as the LCD model.

According to ETNews, LG Display's Vice-Chairman said that the company's goal is to ship 1 million OLED TV panels in 2016 and 1.5 million in 2017. In 2015, LGD shipped around 400,000 OLED panels.

LG's original plan was to sell 600,000 OLED TV panels in 2015 and 1.5 million in 2016. The company later said they will ship less panels in 2015 as more customer want larger panels (65" over 55") which means that LG can produce less panels each month.

LG announced their 2016 OLED TV lineup only a few days ago, but already the first TV is ready to pre-order. The 65" flat 4K OLEDE6 TV now lists on Amazon.com for $6,999. The TV should ship by March although Amazon does not guarantee this.

It's great to see LG's new OLEDs already on offer so quickly. The E6 is a very high-end TV, although LG also announce an even higher-end model (the Signature G6). LG also announced lower-end modules, the flat B6 series and curved C6 series. It'll be interesting to see the price of all those new TVs.

According to ETNews, Samsung Display is under pressure from the LCD business, and is expected to make a final decision regarding a future OLED TV panel production facility investment. According to Digitimes, SDC have resolved the technological issues that previously resulted in low production yields, but there are still many challenges before mass production is possible.

Samsung OLED TV (2009)

I think that the main pressure for Samsung Electronics is actually from LG whose OLED TVs get great reviews and a lot of press. If Samsung wait too long, they may end up losing the future OLED TV market, and already I believe they are starting to be seen as less innovating. And losing to LG will be the most shameful of all...

Dell launched a new monitor, the Ultrasharp 30 OLED. This high-end monitor adopts a 30" 4K OLED panel and features a 0.1 ms response time, 100% AdobeRGB, narrow-bezel design and USB-C connection. The UltraSharp 30 OLED will ship by the end of March 2016 for $4,999.

Dell said that it developed special technologies to compensate for image-burn in (using pixel-shifting) and the relatively short OLED lifetime (using a presence detector that switches off the display when no one is in front of the monitor).

OLED Microdisplay maker eMagin has been developing a new VR head mounted display (HMD) that use the company's latest high resolution (2K by 2K) OLED microdisplays and patented optics. The company announced that it has signed a non-exclusive IP licensing agreement for the HMD technology with an undisclosed company.

The deal includes an upfront $1 million licensing free, and a commitment to use eMagin’s OLED microdisplays in the company’s headsets.

The UK Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Beneq signed a collaboration agreement to commercialise atomic layer deposition (ALD) technologies for printed electronics applications.

CPI OLED production line

Beneq and the CPI will create an open access environment for companies to develop ultra barrier solutions in areas such as photovoltaics, OLEDs, microelectronics and sensors. The CPI recently installed two ALD deposition tools from Beneq for the development of conformal nano-scale coatings - one batch ALD tool and one state of the art roll-to-roll ALD (R2R ALD) system. In particular the roll-to-roll ALD tool processing technology will be actively developed between the two companies.

The OLED Association posted an interesting article, summarizing 2015 and giving its projection for 2016 and onwards. So first of all, they conclude that 2015 was a great year for the OLED display industry, with shipments up 53% over 2014 to reach almost 275 million units. AMOLED Revenues grew to almost $13 billion - up 40% over 2014.

The growth was mostly due to Samsung Display's effort to commercialize flexible OLED displays for mobile phones and the expansion of AMOLED customer beyond Samsung Electronics. LG Display also contributed to the OLED display market, and the OLED association estimates the LG sold over 400,000 OLED TVs. They also say that they shipped around 14,000 flexible OLEDs, but they probably mean around 14 million - as that about makes sense for the Apple Watch.

LG announced their OLED TV lineup in 2016. The company will release four new OLED TV series, all of them use 4K panels (flat and curved). LG will also continue to produce and market the FHD models announced in 2015. All the new TVs support LG's new Web OS 3, HDR and LG's Color Prime PRO technology.

So first up we have the high end Signature G6 line. This is an ultra-slim on-glass design that uses a high-end pivoting speakers. The 65" G6 will launch towards the end of February 2016 while the 77" model will launch a new months later. Prices were not announced yet.