UBI Research says that while virtually all flexible OLEDs used in smartphones today use an edge-type design (which UBI refers to as bezel-less), by next year Samsung will be able to use a flexible OLED to cover the entire smartphone screen.

Such bezel-less displays will grab an almost 20% market share in 2017 (out of all flexible OLED smartphones, that is) - and this will grow to over 50% by 2020. Foldable OLEDs will be the next step, and these will start to appear in 2019 - although UBI does not think foldable OLEDs will grab a meaningful market share even in 2020.

Samsung Electronics halted production of new Galaxy note 7 devices, and the company told all its global partners to stop selling the smartphones. Samsung issued a recall due to faulty batteries - but the recall is not enough and in several cases the new units also exploded. Samsung also asked consumers to power down their devices.

The Note 7 has a 5.7" 2560x1440 (518 ppi) flexible Super AMOLED dual-edge display - which DisplayMate says is the best performing mobile display ever tested. The excellent display is certainly not helping Samsung at this stage...

Oculus has acquired InfiniLED, a Micro-LED display developer based in Ireland. Oculus did not say the amount of money it paid, but it did confirm the acquisition and said that the team joined Oculus Research in a new office dedicated to research in Cork.

Oculus is currently using dual 3.1" 1200x1080 VR AMOLED displays produced by SDC. This is an interesting acquisition which follows Apple's acqusition of Micro-LED developer LuxVue in 2014. There were some reports in June 2016 that Apple is looking to develop a Micro-LED display for future smartwatches, although this was not confirmed.

Following Foxconn's $3.5 billion Sharp Takeover, 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.

Sharp recently announced plans to invest $570 million to setup pilot OLED production lines in Osaka, Japan. According to a new report from Nikkei Asian Review, Foxconn and Sharp new plan is to build the mass production lines in China and not in Japan. The two companies hope that the Chinese government will step up to help with funds. China also represents a larger market for OLED panels (including Apple's iPhones which are made in China).

OLEDWorks announced that the Brite 2 OLED panels are now available. The company's latest OLEDs, announced in March 2016, offer a brightness of 300 lumens, a high CRI (>90) and an efficiency of 60 lm/W.

The Brite 2 OLED comes in either 3000K or 4000K, and is now available as part of a promotion kit which includes four panels for $199.

When Samsung started producing AMOLED displays in 2007, AMOLED technology was at a very early stage, immature, and Samsung took a huge risk. A few years later, this risk was rewarded with a successful display business and a boost to the company's smartphone business that was the first to adopt AMOLED displays.

Fast forward to 2016, and today Samsung is still the king of AMOLED displays, with a market share of over 95% in small/medium AMOLED panels. If we look at OLED TV production, then LG Display is the only commercial producer at this stage. But Samsung and LG are not alone - several companies in China and Taiwan already started mass producing AMOLEDs, and others have announced plans for large AMOLED fabs. In this long article we'll list all of these AMOLED producers and developers (over a dozen) - and details their current production capacity and rumored and confirmed production plans.

Sharp demonstrated a new display prototype called the Corner-R, which uses the company's Free-Form IGZO LCD panel to create a display with curved corners.

From the photo above, it seems like the display is also curved around the edges like Samsung's Edge-type OLEDs, but it may be just a curved glass, I am not sure. This is just a prototype demonstration, though, it's not clear whether Sharp intents to commercialize this display.

OLED-Info's OLED Marketplace offers what we believe to be the world's largest OLED catalog. Today we have upgrade the marketplace software - making it easier to filter available OLED displays by resolution.

We also added several new OLED displays - including a 3.8" VR AMOLED, two new 5.5" HD smartphone-sized AMOLEDs and a custom 2.6" 240x320 AMOLED which can be used to replace CMEL's old 2.8" AMOLEDs.

Applied Materials introduced a new high-resolution inline e-beam review (EBR) system that combines a scanning electron microscope (SEM) capabilities used in semiconductor device review with a large-scale display vacuum platform, resulting in an inline EBR technology that the company says is the fastest and most effective of its kind.

The new system is suitable for both LCD and OLED manufacturing. The company says that next-gen applications such as VR and AR require high quality displays and production of such displays can be enhanced using the new system. Applied already received orders from six of the top ten largest display manufacturers in the world for the new system.