Apple is currently relying on Samsung Display as its exclusive supplier of smartphone OLED displays (SDC produces the 5.8" flexible Super AMOLED display on its flagship iPhone X), and Apple is obviously not content with this situation.

Finding a second supplier is not easy as SDC is the only company that can produce quality flexible OLEDs at the quantities that Apple requires. Reports suggested that Apple is in talks with LGD (also with other companies, such BOE Display) and in its recent filing, LG Display hinted that it is indeed talking to Apple.

LG Display announced that it has started mass production at its new 5-Gen OLED lighting fab in Gumi, Korea. The 5-Gen line (1100x1250 mm substrates) has an initial capacity of 15,000 substrates per month - about 30 times the capacity of LG's previous 2-Gen line that had a monthly capacity of 4,000 substrates.

LG hopes that the new line will enable it to produces OLED lighting panels at a much lower cost (initial estimates suggested a 95% cost reduction!) which it hopes will trigger the widespread adoption of OLED lighting globally.

In August 2016 Sharp said that it wants to collaborate with Japan Display to co-develop and produce OLED displays. JDI responded saying that Sharp did not actually reach out regarding such a collaboration, but it seems that Sharp did not give up on that idea.

Sharp's stock returned to the Tokyo Stock Exchange first section after a year of absence, and the company's president told Reuters that it is going to ask Japan's government it help it form an alliance with JDI. Sharp is also considering an investment in JOLED.

A few day go JOLED announced that it started commercial shipments of its 21.6" 4K OLED panels for use in medical monitors, in its low-volume 4.5-Gen ink-jet printing production line.

Following JDI's decision to halt its plans to increase its stake at JOLED, the company is now seeking to raise $900 million to support its plan to start mass producing OLEDs in 2019. According to a report from Japan the company has received commitments from Sony and Panasonic and both Sumitomo Chemical (who supplies its PLED materials to JOLED) and Screen Holdings (who supplies its equipment to JOLED) are likely to take part in the financing round as well.

DSCC estimates that 88 Million smartphone OLED displays were shipped in Q3 2017, which represents a 4% drop from Q2 2017 and a 13% drop from Q3 2016 - mostly due to delays in iPhone X shipments. Flexible OLED shipments were up 25% from Q2 2017 (30.4 million units).

Shipments are expected to grow significantly in Q4 2017, though, to reach 151 million units. Flexible OLEDs shipments (78.3 million) will grow 157% from last quarter and 544% from last year, and will surpass rigid OLED shipments (73.3 million) for the first time.

US-based Light Polymers launched a new circular polarizer for OLED displays based on its lyotropic liquid crystal technology. The new polarizer is said to be the world's thinner polarizer at only 45 µm.

These lyotropic liquid crystals are water-based, and can be coated using industry standard coating equipment at nearly room temperatures. This enables the company to produce these displays at a lower-cost compared to alternatives, and its production line can currently coat around 30-40 million m² per year, costing a tenth of the capex and lower energy costs than competing processes (this is according to Light Polymers, of course).

In 2015 the EU launched a 3-year €4 million OLED lighting project, the LEO project (Low-cost / energy Efficient OLEDs) that had an aim to develop efficient and cost-effective bendable OLED lighting technologies. The project consortium included Osram, and Cynora.

A month before the project officially ends, the partners updated on their progress. For this project, the partners develops several technologies, including low-cost metal foils integrating OLED anodes and possibly backside monitoring printed circuits, smart OLED top-electrode architectures and light out-coupling solutions and a novel thin film top-encapsulation strategies. These technologies together increased the light output by 50% while providing better surface scratch resistance.

Update: it seems this is an E Ink (monochrome) device and not an OLED one...

According to our sources, flexible OLED developer Royole is set to release a new tablet device that uses an OLED display. The tablet, which will be called the Royole RoWrite Wordpad, will have a display sized at around 6-7 inch. Royole did not officially announce the device yet.

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. In addition to flexible OLED production and R&D, Royole also develops VR headsets, and in 2016 Royole launched its first product, the Royole Moon foldable VR headset - that uses OLED microdisplays to achieve a PPI of over 3,000.

In June 2017 JOLED announced that it started to sample 21.6" 4K OLED panels, with plans to initiate low volume production at its 4.5-Gen pilot inkjet production line. JOLED announced today that it has began commercial shipments of these panels. We do not know JOLED's first customer but it is likely to be Sony.

JOLED says that it has now achieved the necessary product quality and production yields. The product was already selected for use in medical monitors (again, we believe this is Sony, who we know received JOLED's first samples and already has its own 25" OLED medical monitor that uses Sony's own OLEDs). JOLED also aims to ship these panes to other OLED monitors applications.

According to the Korea Herald, LG Display approved a plan to expand its OLED TV module plant in Vietnman. LGD will invest around $1.1 billion USD to expand the Vietnamese plant, which assembles the TVs (the panels themselves are produced in Korea). This fab expansion is planned to be carried out in the next four years in several phases.

The Korea Herald speculates that this expansion plan may have been approved due to Korea's government reluctance to approve LGD's OLED TV fab in China, although the Chinese fab will be an OLED TV fab and not a module plant.