Panasonic has been showing transparent OLED display prototypes and concepts since 2016 (with the latest one shown last year in Shanghai) and today the Japanese TV maker has demonstrated a new transparent concept OLED display.

The new display, designed by Scandinavian based designer Daniel Rybakken in collaboration with Panasonic Design Kyoto uses a transparent OLED panel housed in a wooden cabinet that looks like a regular glass cabinet.

In September 2019 Nubia unveiled the Alpha - smartband that turns into a smartphone - with a foldable OLED display. Nubia said it will launch its Alpha foldable smartband by the end of 2018, but later updated the launch date to April 2019.

Nubia has started to accept pre-orders for the Alpha which will start shipping tomorrow in China only for now - for 3499 Yuan (around $520). The first device to ship is the Bluetooth variant - and Nubia plans to release an eSim variant which will cost around $625 and will launch in Q3 2019.

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the flexible, VR/AR, microdisplays, automotive, PMOLED and graphene OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to April 2019.

The Flexible and Foldable OLED Market Report:

• Why flexible displays and lighting panels are so exciting
• What kind of flexible displays are currently on the market
• All about the foldable OLED market and industry
• What the future holds for flexible OLEDs
• How to acquire flexible OLEDs for your products

The report package provides a good introduction to the flexible and foldable OLED market - present and future. It details both flexible displays and lighting technologies. Read more here!

In June 2018 Kyulux and Wisechip unveiled a PMOLED display that uses Kyulux’s Hyperfluorescence yellow emitter. Kyulux updated today that Wisechip is now ready to start producing the HF panel and is seeking customers.

Wisechip eventually settled on a large panel - 73.00 x 41.86 mm (2.7") with a resolution of 128x64. Wisechip says that the power consumption of its HF display is almost half of its regular fluorescent yellow PMOLED.

JOLED announced that it has raised 25.5 billion Yen (around $228 million USD) from INCJ, Sony and Nissha. JOLED also announced that it has started to build post-processing module production lines at its Mobara, Chiba prefecture, plant. Nissha will also collaborate with JOLED in the area of OLED touch sensors.

JOLED's printed OLED displays will be produced at the company's Nomi plant. JOLED currently uses a pilot 4.5-Gen line at Nomi, but the company has already announced plans for a new mass production 5.5-Gen line in Nomi by 2020.

Pulse-Width Modulation, or PWM, is the most common way to adjust the brightness of an OLED display. PWM is the easiest way to achieve high quality brightness control, but it has some serious drawbacks - such as flicker that may cause eye strain and headaches. Some people suffer greatly from PWM-controlled displays.

Device makers are seemingly starting to acknowledge this. Xiaomi has added DC-Dimming as an alternative to PWN in its Mi 9 smartphone (6.39" 1080x2340 AMOLED display) and its Black Shark 2 gaming phone (which uses the same display). OnePlus confirmed that it is also looking at adding a DC-Dimming option in a future OS update.

In February 2019 Samsung Display started to mass produce its new 15.6" 3840x2160 OLED display panels, and finally we have the first laptop to ship with such a panel - Dell is now offering its 2019 Alienware m15 laptop. The 15.6" OLED display is a $350 extra compared to the regular 15.6" FHD LCD (according to Digitimes, the price gap between these two displays should have been closer to $60).

SDC is targeting premium laptops, as these ultra high resolution panels are optimized for gaming, graphic design and video streaming. At CES we saw three companies that announced 15" OLED laptops - HP with its Spectre x360, Lenovo with the Yoga C730 and Dell with the XPS 15, Dell G7 15 and the Alienware m15 which is indeed now shipping.

IHS says that recent years have seen a drastic growth in smartwatch shipments - the market grew from 9.4 million units in 2014 to 149 million units in 2018. In just one year, shipments grew 42% from 2017 to 2018.

This rising demand for smartwatches has of course created a rising demand for displays. OLED displays are leading this segment - with around 80% of shipments in 2018 (the rest are mostly LCD displays). AMOLED display shipments were around 42 million and PMOLED shipments reached around 75 million.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin announced that it agreed to sell 4 million shares to an institutional investor at a purchase price per share of $0.50 in a registered direct offering (eMagin stock price was $0.78 before the announcement).

eMagin also issued unregistered warrants to purchase up to 3 million shares of common stock at an exercise price of $0.78 per share to the investor.

UBI Research estimates that the OLED material market will grow to $1.17 billion in 2019, and to $1.87 billion in 2021. The market is expected to reach $2 billion in revenues in 2023.

Interestingly, UBI says that in 2029 70% of the materials will be consumed by Korean companies (LGD and SDC) - and Korea's market share will grow to 75.6% in 2023. This will be driven be soaring consumption of materials for TV production (OLED TV materials will take up 49.7% of the total market in 2023 up from only 21.1% in 2019).