The biggest news in the past month has been the sale of Kodak's OLED unit to LG. Kodak has invented OLEDs more than 40 years ago and has been working on the technology since. So it is rather sad to see them go (although Kodak retains the right to use the tech in their own products, so we might see some OLEDs from Kodak yet). On the other hand, this shows LG's great commitment to OLEDs.

There are reports that LG have decided to create a new company to handle all OLEDs patents and technologies within the LG group (to be called LG OLED), and it will be financed by LG electronics, LG Display and LG Chem.

HTC new 2010 lineup has been leaked, and it includes 2 OLED phones. The Bravo has a 3.7" touch OLED, and the Legend has a 3.2" touch OLED. Both run the Android OS.

Google is also said to be launching an Android phone, the Nexus one. There are a lot of speculations, but it seems clear that it'll have an OLED display (a 3.7", WVGA).

Finally, Samsung is rumored to release an update to their Galaxy phone (to be called Galaxy 2, or Saturn I6500). It will have a large toch OLED (4.1").

One of the biggest drawbacks of OLEDs is the poor performance in direct sunlight. We have discussed this before in OLED-Info. There's a new video showing how the Samsung Omnia II phone behaves in such conditions - and it seems to be better than the transflective LCD used in Nokia's N900. Barry Young from the OLED Association has told us that the new OLED displays will be much brighter and better in sunlight - perhaps he is right...

LG has announced a new LED LCD TV, that's only 2.6mm thick. That's even thinner than Sony's XEL-1 (3mm). A few years ago, one of the advantages of OLEDs were being thin and light, but LCD has advanced very quickly in that respect - although OLEDs can be made much thinner, it doesn't seem to really matter any more, at least for TVs. Unless of course they'll start making rollable, flexible OLED TVs...

CES 2010 will begin in January 7th. Previous CES has given us lot's of OLED products, prototypes and announcements. Hopefully this year will not be any different. We're looking for:

• Sony's new 27" or 21" (or both?) OLED TV
• LG 15" OLED TV, and maybe some larger prototypes or products
• It's unlikely that Samsung wil show an OLED TV product, but they might announce an OLED laptop (promised for Q3 2010).
• Lot's of new mobile phones (including Google's Nexus One), PMP players and perhaps new OLED tablets and UMPCs
• Transparent and Flexible OLED prototypes

CES will sure be exciting... stay tuned!

DisplaySerach has released their latest Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report. They say that OLED revenues have reached $252 million in Q3 2009, up 31% Q/Q. OLED shipments were 21.7 million (up 19% Q/Q). Demand was driven by high-end mobile phones. Samsung continue to lead the market with a 73% market share (in revenues). RiTDisplay is second with a 12% share.

OLED-Info readers can get a 5% discount on this report, follow this link

The Samsung Moment is a very popular phone - at least over at Amazon.com, where it's currently #2 best selling smartphone. The Moment has a 3.2" touch OLED, full QWERTY slider, 3.2mp camera, microSDHC slot, Wi-Fi and GPS. It runs Google's Android OS (on a 800Mhz processor).

Another OLED gadget that is popular is Nikon's S70. Despite getting rather bad reviews, it's number #13 and #14 in Amazon's best-selling point-and-shoot cameras. Different colored S70 are listed as different products, so totally it should rank even higher. The S70 has a 3.5" touch OLED.

Taiwan's Innolux has acquired two companies that had OLED programs: TPO and CMO. This is a 3-way-merger that is supposed to take place in May 2010, and the new company will be called Chimei Innolux.

This is interesting news, but we do not know yet how will it effect the companies' OLED program. CMEL is producing AMOLED panels for quite sometime. There were some rumors that They are working at only 40% of their capacity, because of financial problems at CMO. These problems are now over with the merger, hopefully.

TPO hasn't yet started to mass-produce OLEDs, and were facing some technical problems, that caused some delays. They are currently developing 3"-4" panels for mobile phones and cameras. They had plans to start producing the 3" panels this year, but we're not sure if they have actually begun. It was reported that TPO will supply Nokia with these AMOLEDs.