LG's long-awaited V30, the company's first OLED phone for a long time, sports a 6-inch curved flexible AMOLED (pOLED) with a resolution of 1440x2880 (537 PPI). Other notable features include a snapdragon 835 chipset, 64/128 GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, dual-lens rear camera, circular fingerprint scanner.
The V30 is now shipping for around $830 (unlocked).
Samsung's Gear Fit2 Pro is a Tizen-based curved smartwatch aimed for exercise tracking, that sports a 1.5" 216x432 (310 PPI) Super AMOLED display, dual-core 1Ghz CPU, 4GB of internal storage and 512MB of RAM.
The Gear Fit2 Pro is priced at $199 and will start shipping in September 15th.
According to IHS, the OLED encapsulation material grew 4.7% in 2017 to reach $117 million. IHS expects the market to grow at a 16% CAGR to reach $233 by 2021.
The market growth rate will increase as new OLED fabs begin operation in China and Korea. IHS categorizes OLED encapsulation materials into metal, frit glass, TFE and hybrid. The metal type is mostly used for OLED TVs, in which IHS expects the fastest growth in terms of substrate size. Glass encapsulation will remain strong but will lose market share in the future.
According to Digitimes, Visionox has completed the construction of the building for its 6-Gen AMOLED fab in Hebei province, China. The company will start moving in and installing the production equipment in the beginning of 2018.
Visionox's 6-Gen fab will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates, and will be mainly used to produce flexible AMOLEDs. Production will begin in mid-2018. This fab will cost around $4.5 billion.
Samsung's Gear Sport is a Tizen OS sport-oriented smartwatch that features a 1.2" round Super AMOLED display (360 x 360), a dual-core 1Ghz chipset, 768 RAM and 4GB of storage, built-in GPS, several sensors and a 300 mAh battery with wireless charging. The Gear Sport is shock-proof and water-resistant up to 50 meters.
Samsung did not detail the price or release date of the Gear Sport yet.
Last year researchers from Korea's KAIST institute developed a process to deposit OLED displays on textile substrates. Using several-micrometer-thick fibers, the researcher created thin fabrics from these fibers and coated them with OLED materials which were then encapsulated to achieve a lifetime of 1,000 hours.
The same KAIST group now announced that this OLED-on-fabric program is advancing. The researchers now report that their latest prototype "OLED-clothing-device" has high lifetimes and feature good electro-optic characteristics. The bending radius of the new fabric is only 2 mm. The researchers say that this new prototype is the most flexible and highest performing OLED on fabric ever demonstrated.
According to Business Korea, Sony is enjoying "explosive" demand for its OLED TVs since the beginning of Q2 2017, and the Japanese TV maker has reached out to LGD asking to double OLED TV shipments.
Sony will receive a total of 300,000 OLED TV panels from LGD in 2017, and it aims to order more than 600,000 panels per year starting in 2019 (once LGD can increase its OLED TV capacity). The Korean report suggested that Sony may assist LGD with an investment to secure the capacity.
Mercedes-Benz will unveil its upcoming S-Class Coupe and Cabriolet cars at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show in September. These new premium cars will sport OLED lighting - Mercedes released the teaser you see below.
Mercedes adopted red OLED panels, and each module includes 33 individually controlled OLED panels. It will be great to see these cars next month, hopefully the OLEDs will be used in all models (in Audi's case, the OLED Taillights are optional extras).
In March 2017 OLED maker BOE Technology and OLED Microdisplay maker OLiGHTEK announced a new joint-venture to produce OLED microdisplays for the consumer VR and AR markets. The new venture will establish production fab in Kunming, Yunnan with an annual production capacity of a million OLED microdisplays.
BOE Technology announced a few days ago the structure of this venture has been finalized. Total investment will amount to ¥1.15 billion (around $172 million USD), a bit higher than first announced. BOE will invest ¥670 billion and will hold a 67% stake. OLiGHTEK will invest ¥200 million.
UBI Research estimates smartphone OLED display shipments reached 95.3 million units in Q2 2017, up 2.6% from last year (92.9 million Q2 2016) while TV panel shipments grew 165% to reach 370,000 units.
Compared to last quarter (Q1 2017), smartphone shipments grew 0.6%. Samsung Display is still the clear market leader - with a market share of 96.7%. OLED TV panel shipments increased 21.2% from Q1 2017, and UBI expects this market to continue growing gradually throughout 2017.
