According to DisplaySearch, OLED revenue reached $826 million in 2009 - a record year. AMOLED revenue was $537 million, and PMOLED revenue was $291 million which is lower than 2008, mostly because mobile phone design is moving away from clamshell phones.

Samsung Mobile Display is still the biggest OLED maker, with $566 million in revenues. Samsung is followed by RiTdisplay ($106 million), Pioneer ($60 million), TDK and Visionox ($15 million).

Samsung has confirmed a large investment to build a new Gen 5.5 OLED plant. They will begin installing equipment in 3Q 2010, and the plant will go online in full capacity in January 2011. LG seems to be committed too, with a new $225 million investment that aims to triple OLED production capacity in 2H 2011.

There were a few lighting fairs and exhibitions in April, and a lot of companies showed us new OLED Lighting panels and designs.

First we saw a couple of new designs by PPML, using OSRAM's ORBEOS panels, and also OSRAM prototype transparent OLED panels. One of the pieces, called o-Frame, uses a transparent OLED for a "luxury object" showcase box. When the box is closed, the OLED is off (transparent) and you can look inside. When you open, it lights up. A nice design!

Novaled has teamed up with Ingo Maurer, who designed some OLED lamps that use transparent panels on glass substrates. GE and Konica Minolta are also displaying new lamps, which use flexible white OLEDs. We don't have any technical details on those. Jason Bruges is showing a new artwork based on Philips Lumiblade panels, check out this nice video...

Several companies has unveiled new OLED panels:

• LEDON with ORBEOS based panels and rectangular OLED modules fabricated in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IPMS.
• Panasonic has new square OLED lighting panels, but don't have a lot of details on these.
• Kaneka (based in Japan) has apparently been working on OLED Lighting - and they say that their panels are ready to be shipped. They offer panels in three different colors: daylight, warm-white and red.
• Neoview-Kolon are also working on OLED Lighting, and plans to start buying equipment for a production line soon.

We also got our share of OLED Lighting news. Korea's CPRI institute will change its focus to OLED Lighting, Berkeley researchers found a new way to process white OLEDs, CDT and CIT showed ITO-Free P-OLED lighting panels, India has announced a $10 million project to develop LED and OLED Lighting. Last but not least, we have posted our own review of Osram's ORBEOS OLED Lighting panels.

We know that Sony have stopped making their XEL-1 OLED TV. But have they really given up on OLEDs? They have recently unveiled some new professional products that use a 7.4" OLED display, apparently made by Sony themselves. It seems that Sony are producing OLEDs again, this is great news.