Tomorrow (October 27th) Apple is set to announce its new MacBook Pro lineup, and reports suggested that one of the new features in these new laptops will be an OLED touch bar, a secondary display placed above the keyboard (instead of the function keys).

A leaked image (shown above) from Apple's Pay platform was circulated yesterday, showing and supposedly confirming the new touch bar (which many believe Apple will call Magic Toolbar) - which will also apparently support touch ID.

According to a story on iTers News, Tianma is planning to construct a 6-Gen AMOLED fab in Xiamen, China. The fab's capacity will be 30,000 monthly substrates.

The origin of this story is from LG Electronics' whose PRI research institute won a bid to supply ELA LTPS laser equipment to Tianma's upcoming fab.

Sony launched its PlayStation VR HMD last week in Japan and according to Media Create over 51,500 units were sold within one week - over 90% of available stock. Most consumers chose the bundle which includes the headset, a camera and the Move controllers.

Sony's PlayStation VR uses a 5.7" FHD (1920x1080) AMOLED display (produced by Samsung Display), 360-degree tracking and 3D audio. It is exclusive to the PlayStation 4 and costs around $400 (headset only).

Switzerland-based R&D tools provider Fluxim released a new simulation tool called Laoss. Laoss is aimed specifically for large area organic electronic devices - such as large OLED display and lighting panels and perovskite solar cells.

The Laoss software is used to design optimal electrode lay-outs of any shape with and without current carrying grids. Fluxim says that a carefully designed electrode layout avoids non-uniformities that arise due to the resistance of the electrode and charge injecting layers. Laoss tool can be used in combination with Fluxim’s Setfos software to design the layer stack of the OLED/PV device as well as with results from the Paios measurement platform.

Last month we posted a rather strange story - a Chinese soy and grain beverage maker announced that it aims to raise $2.7 billion to enter the OLED market. Black Cattle Food said it will setup a join-venture with unannounced partners to construct a 6-Gen AMOLED fab to produce small-size OLED panels.

According to new reports from China, Black Cattle Food actually started to construct this 6-Gen AMOLED fab, in Hebei Province, northern China. The investment is now estimated at $4.5 billion. The new fab will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates.

Lucid Motors, a new automotive upstart, showed off its upcoming car, a premium electric sedan. The car is about 90% complete, according to Lucid, but following two years of development, the company was ready to show some first photos and provide some information.

The car builds on high-end technologies, including patented lithium-ion battery technology and a dual-motor system. The dashboard and infotainment system is using OLED displays - in fact Lucid's prototype car has four OLED screens. Lucid did not give any details on those OLEDs, unfortunately.

UBI Research says that WOLED technology will lead the premium TV market from 2020 onwards. LCD will not be able to match the performance of OLED TVs at the high-end of the TV market, and solution-based OLED TVs and QD TVs will find it hard to penetrate the market as WOLED technology is one step ahead in commercialization.

According to UBI, in 2016 OLED TVs will grab a 16.7% share of the global premium TV market. In 2020, OLED TVs will lead that market with a 68.1% share.

When Foxconn acquired a majority stake in Sharp for $3.5 billion, it was reported that Foxconn aims to invest a total of $1.8 billion in OLED technologies, as Foxconn aims to become an OLED supplier to Apple. In June 2016 Foxconn's president said that the company aims to start mass producing OLEDs as early as 2017, but this was way too optimistic - production will probably start at 2018 or even 2019.

An interesting article in Business Korea states that both LG Display and Samsung Display are not very worried about this competition from Japan. LG Display estimates that actually mass producing flexible OLEDs will not be as easy as Sharp hopes - and that the Japanese maker will not be able to compete with flexible OLEDs by at least 2019 or possibly 2020.

UBI Research foresees the flexible AMOLED market rising from $4.9 billion in 2016 to $40.8 billion in 2020 - a CAGR of 70%. According to UBI, in 2020 around one billion flexible AMOLEDs will be produced.

UBI says that there is a high possibility that a foldable smartphone will be launched in 2017 to observe the market reaction - which means that it'll be a low-volume high-end product - there are still many challenges towards a foldable device.

Samsung Electronics suffered a major blow when it had to halt Galaxy Note 7 production - to both its reputation and its bottom line (reports say the company's profit will drop by over $5 billion following this incident). An interesting story from Business Korea says that Samsung Display is now under pressure to speed up foldable OLED development.

Foldable OLEDs may prove to be highly successful - if these displays will enable novel devices. Samsung is said to develop two foldable OLED mobile phone designs at the first stage - a smartphone that opens into a tablet and a small phone that opens into a smartphone-sized device.