LG Display's 900 million E5 line in Gumi is scheduled to start producing flexible AMOLED soon, and according to the Korea Herald LG aims to adopt flexible OLEDs in its upcoming V30 smartphone (due out in September) and also in the 2018 G7 phone.

The Korea Herald says that LG aims to start adopting OLEDs in all its future smartphones - although it is likely that the Korean maker will only use OLEDs in premium phones (especially as it is only producing high-end flexible OLEDs rather than glass based ones). LGD will also reportedly devote some of its capacity to Chinese phone makers.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q1 2017. Revenues in the quarter were $6.1 million (down from $7 million in Q1 2016). Product revenues totaled $4.4 million (down from $5.3 million in Q1 2016 but up from $3.7 million in Q4 2016). Net loss was $2 million (compared to a net income of $11,000 in Q1 2016).

At the end of the quarter eMagin had $3.8 million in cash and equivalents. The company's main objectives in the near future is to advance its technology and complete the direct-patterning development, achieve consumer design wins for VR and AR headset makers and sign a large-scale production agreement to support the large volumes required for consumer displays.

Last month we reported that Korean press ran stories that Samsung has started construction of its A4 flexible OLED fab. The A4 was said to be Samsung's first 7-Gen fab (although some other reports claimed it will be a 6-Gen fab) and to have a huge capacity of 135,000 monthly substrate.

The Korea Herald today reports that Samsung Display denies that it has started construction of a new OLED fab. Samsung says that the company did level the ground in an area adjacent to its existing manufacturing site in Asan, but it has not yet decided on what to do with the land.

OLEDWorks introduced a new OLED lighting panel, the Brite Amber. This panel is free from any blue emission and OLEDWorks sees applications in the healthcare, senior living and residential markets. This upgrade to OLEDWorks' existing Amber panel features a higher brightness of 2,000 cd/m².

The Brite AMber features an efficiency of over 50 lm/W and the lifetime is over 25,000 (but OLEDWOrks does not mention at what brightness level). The panel is 41.5 x 101.6 mm in size (active area 88 x 25 mm).

AU Optronics says that nine fashion brands have adopted the company's 1.2" and 1.4" round AMOLED displays for future smartwatch products. AUO will begin shipping the displays to these products in Q2 2017 - with shipments expected to reach a million panels per quarter in the second half of 2017.

AUO started producing its 1.4" circular AMOLED display in 2015. The company already ships those to smartwatch makers in China. You can find out more information on AUO's round AMOLED here.

Universal Display announced its financial results for Q1 2017. The company reported an excellent quarter, with revenues of $55.6 million (up 87% from Q1 2016) and net income of $10.4 million (up from $1.9 million in Q1 2016). Material sales were $46.6 million, up 92% over Q1 2016.

Universal Display believes that the OLED industry is poised to grow faster than earlier expectations in 2017, and the company raised its 2017 guidance to at least $260 million to $280 million - reflecting a year over year growth of 30% to 40%.

The Fraunhofer FEP institute in Germany first unveiled its bi-directional OLED microdisplays in 2012 with the novel idea of embedding photo detectors between the OLED pixels. Since then the instituted demonstrated its second-generation microdisplay that supported a resolution of 800x600 (SVGA), up from VGA in the first generation prototypes.

The Fraunhofer FEP now announced that it developed a new generation of these displays, that employ an extra-think encapsulation layer, which can turn these new displays into fingerprint sensors. The idea is that the OLED display illuminates the fingers and then the reflected light is used to detect and analyze the fingerprint with excellent accuracy.

This is a sponsored post by Kyulux

The International TADF Workshop 2017 will take place in July 20-21, 2017, at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. The workshop, organized by Kyushu University and supported by Kyulux, aims to share the recent advances and future direction of TADF science and technologies.

This event will bring speakers from LG Display, Dow Chemical and dozens other from Universities all over the world. This is a free workshop (although there is a fee to attend the banquet). Kyushu is the "birthplace" of TADF technology and this should be an interesting and exciting event that will cover a wide gamut of cutting-edge research in TADF chemistry, devices, and applications.

SFA Engineering announced that it has signed a $53.5 million contract with OLED developer Royole to supply OLED manufacturing equipment. SFA did not disclose what kind of deposition equipment it will deliver exactly.

Royole is constructing a 5.5-Gen flexible OLED production facility in Shenzhen, China. The new fab is scheduled to begin operation in 2018 and will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates.

Sony recently started shipping its first OLED TV, the XBR-A1E, and the company now launched a new ad campaign, with the title "Experience a whole new world". In the description of the video you can see below (update: Sony removed the video and it is no longer available), Sony says that OLEDs are the future of TV, with extraordinary contrast, deep blacks and life-like color - coupled with a cutting-edge product design".

I'm not sure if an OLED really replaces the experience of seeing the earth from the moon, but there you have it. Sony's XGR-A1E costs the $3,999 for the 55" model and $5,499 for the 65" one.