According to Digitimes, Innolux is building a new 6-Gen LTPS line that will have a monthly capacity of around 23,000 substrates - and will produce both LCD and AMOLED panels. Innolux expects the new line to start producing panels in the first half of 2016.

Innolux AMOLED prototypes (2012)

Innolux has been promising small scale OLED production back in 2012, but this never materialized, and the company shifted focus to 4K technologies later that year. The company has a 3.5-Gen IGZO fab in Tainan is used for R&D only. Innolux has been using WRGB architecture for prototype AMOLED panels, but we do not know what kind of panels are currently under development there.

In September 2015 Panasonic announced the company's first OLED TV, the TX-65CZ950. This TV hasn't been released yet, but Panasonic is showing it again at CES 2016, and confirms that it will be sold in the US too.

The CZ950 uses a curved 65" 4K OLED panel (produced by LG Display) that features Panasonic's 4K Pro tech which includes advanced gradation controls and 3D color look tables. The TV supports HDR and is THX certified.

Yesterday LG Display announced it will showcase a 18" rollable (30 mm curvature radius) OLED prototype, and today the BBC posted a nice video demonstrating the display:

It's not clear whether this display is actually different from the 18" rollable OLED demonstrated in July 2014, but still it seems to be a lovely display, and hopefully LGD is getting closer to commercialization...

A day after Lenovo announced the world's first OLED laptop (the 14" X1 Yoga), HP announced a similar product - a model of the popular Spectre X360 hybrid laptop/tablet that comes with a 13.3" 2560x1600 AMOLED display.

HP did not reveal the price premium of the OLED model, but they said that it will ship by the spring of 2016. It's highly likely that Samsung Display is the producer of the AMOLED.

Today we published new versions of all our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay  and flexible OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to January 2016.

The Flexible OLED Market Report:

• Why flexible displays and lighting panels are so exciting
• What kind of flexible displays are currently on the market
• What the future holds for flexible OLEDs
• How to acquire flexible OLEDs for your products

The report package provides a good introduction to the flexible OLED market - present and future. It details both flexible displays and lighting technologies. Read more here!

Idemitsu Kosan is a large multinational Chemical company based in Japan that is supplying OLED materials for OLED producers. Idemitsu has OLED business units in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China and is collaborating with UDC, LGD, AU Optronics, Doosan and others.

Hajime Nakamoto, the head of the Electronic Materials Department at Idemitsu was kind enough to answer a few questions we had. Mr. Nakamoto joined Idemitsu in 1984 and has been involved with OLEDs since 2007.

Q: Hajime, Thank you for your time. Idemitsu has been one of the leaders in OLED materials for a very long time. Can you tell us what kind of materials you currently offer for OLED panel makers?

Idemitsu offers almost all kinds of OLED materials to OLED panel makers. Idemitsu is particularly well-known for its fluorescent blue host and dopant materials and transport materials, which offer advantages to OLED panel makers.

According to a report from Korea, the Kolon Group decided to close its OLED subsidiary, Neoview Kolon. NeoView Kolon was established in 2000 and has been producing PMOLED and OLED lighting panels, including transparent panels. According to the report, Kolon invested almost $84 million in Neoview Kolon - but the company never turned a profit.

Neoview Kolon transparent OLED prototype

In the last few years NeoView Kolon focused on transparent panels for the automotive industry - but could not generate revenues. Recently the company also started developing flexible transparent PMOLEDs.

LG Display announced it will showcase several OLED prototypes and products at CES 2016 next week. LGD will show 65" and 77" 4K HDR OLED TVs, a paper-thin 55" concept, a 139" Vertical-Tiled OLED display and a 18" rollable OLED that has a curvature radius of 30 mm.

Most of these displays were already on display. The 18" rollable OLED was first demonstrated in July 2014 and in May 2015 LGD announced flat 0.97 mm thick 55" OLEDs. The 139" tiled display is now, although a few months ago LGD did showcase a 111" double-sided wave display that was made from three attached 65" 4K OLED panels.

Lenovo announced a new laptop-tablet hybrid family - the X1 Yoga, which is the world's first OLED laptop. The X1 Yoga is equipped with a 14" 2550x1440 display - LCD in the lower models and OLED in the higher-end ones. The hybrid configuration goes up to Core i7 CPUs, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage. The laptop weighs 1.27 Kg.

The basic X1 Yoga starts at $1,449 (with an LCD) - the OLED model will be released in April 2016 - price hasn't been announced yet.