July 2011

UK's Printable Electronics Technology Center (PETEC) recently launched their OLED/OPV prototyping line called LACE. The LACE is suitable for processing both air sensitive and non air sensitive material sets for the production of devices on a range of substrate sizes up to 200mm square.

LACE provides capability to materials companies, device designers and end users the opportunity to optimize their technologies within a fully automated, controlled environment. The system was built by Mbraun (who just recently released three videos showing their OLED processing equipment).

Paul Peng, AUO's executive VP says that OLED TV panels won't be price competitive until 2014 - the high production costs will remain due to low yield rates. This is a 'response' to LG claiming that they will start producing 55 OLED TV panels next year.

AUO 14-inch OLED prototype

Of course we have to remember that AUO is still lagging behind LG Display and Samsung in AMOLED production. Both Samsung and LG are already producing AMOLEDs while AUO is still struggling with the production process.

Nanomarkets will host a one-hour OLED Lighting webinar on August 2 (8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time). This webinar will provide a guide to the opportunities that NanoMarkets sees arising in the OLED Lighting space. It will examine how OLED lighting performance is evolving, how OLED lighting form factors are likely to evolve to fit the needs of the existing lighting infrastructure, and where OLED lighting will generate early revenues.

In addition, this webinar will take a look at the strategies of the leading firms in OLED lighting, where the manufacturing plant is being installed today and what kind of processing technologies are being deployed for OLED lighting. The webinar will also report on how the first supply chains for OLED lighting are evolving.

Sony released three new walkman players - The high-end NWZ-A860 and the NWZ-S760BT, and NWZ-E460. None of these use OLED - they all use LCD displays. This is rather a disappointment - as most people assumed that Sony will stick to OLED in their high-end players.

The A series A860 replaces the A840/A845 which used a 2.8" OLED. The new A860 has a 2.8" touch LCD. Sony hasn't released a new model in the X series - since the original X1000 OLED was announced in 2009.

Lumiotec announced it will start selling two OLED lamps in September 1st - in Japan, Europe and other countries. The first one is the Hanger - a portable lamp that comes in several colors (red, white, yellow, blue, yellow-green, pink, purple and silver) and has a really cool design:

The Hanger uses Lumiotec's 14.5x14.5 Square white OLED panels (here's our Hands on review of the first generation version of these panels). The OLED features a color temperature of 4,900K, maximum luminance of 2,700cd/m² and it consumes 9.5W. The price of the Hanger (including the controller, dimmer switch and AC/DC adapter) is ¥35,000 (or about $450) which makes it the cheapest OLED lamp available.

Samsung announced that they sold 5 million Galaxy S II phones - in just 85 days (on July 22nd). That's a lot faster than the Galaxy S - which took 125 days to sell 5 million. The Galaxy S took 7 months to reach 10 million units - and Samsung says that the S II is expected to reach that amount sooner too. The S II isn't selling in the US yet...

The SII sold 3 million units in 55 days - they sold 2 million in just 30 days - so sales are actually accelerating as Samsung introduces the phone into more and more markets. In this rate the will cross the 10 million mark soon, beating Samsung's own original expectations.

LUX Research released a new OLED lighting report (Finding the End of the Tunnel for OLED Lighting) in which they say that OLED lighting will remain a small niche player in the future - in fact in 2020 worldwide revenues will only amount to $58 million.

LUX Research says that while OLEDs will drop from $18 per lumen today to $0.71 per lumen in 2020, this will not be enough as the technology will still lag behind other display technologies, and this will limit adoption. LUX Research also forecasts that flexible OLEDs on plastic substrate will be cheaper than glass - and will cost $0.18 per lumens in 2020. They say that 63% of the OLED market in 2020 will be flexible OLEDs.

Solvay announced that it invested €10 million in Plextronics. Solvay is Plextronics' largest shareholder. Plextronics is developing and selling polymer-based materials and technologies for key applications of printed electronics - such as OLEDs and OPVs.

In March 2011 we posted an interview with Andy Hannah, Plextronics CEO. It's great to hear that the company succeeded in another financing round, and hopefully this will accelerate the technology development.

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