CES 2010 is over. Most of the hype went towards E-Readers and 3D TVs. We didn't get any new OLED TV product announcements, which is a real shame. It seems that OLEDs are great for 3D TVs though, and both Sony and Samsung displayed beautiful prototypes. Hopefully 3D will be the "killer-App" for OLEDs, as Sony says that 'OLED is the best way to view 3D'. So no new OLED TV, but a lot of new OLED products (see the full list on the right) and many cool new concepts and prototypes. We even saw nice custom OLED artwork...

Samsung, as always, have shown a lot of OLED displays and gadgets. They have finally unveiled a 7" AMOLED - the 700Z digital photo frame. They have also shown the first product to use a transparent OLED, the 2" IceTouch MP3 player. Talking of transparency, their 14" transparent OLED laptop was a beautiful prototype, that got a lot of attention. As we mentioned above, Samsung displayed a 14" 3D AMOLED prototype. Sony also showed a nice 24.5" OLED 3D prototype.

A nice surprise was a Dell OLED laptop prototype - a Studio XPS 16. It's just a 'concept' at this stage, but Dell are excited about OLEDs - they are faster, thinner and use less power than LCDs. A perfect fit for a laptop. Dell will soon reveal their Mini 5 device, which has a beautiful 5" display that some speculate might be an OLED. We do not know for sure yet.

We always consider Flexible and Transparent OLEDs to be very cool, but assume that they'll take years to actually mature. Perhaps we've been a bit pessimistic. It seems that Samsung are actually keen on Transparent OLEDs, showing the first MP3 player with such a display (a 2" touch AMOLED), and a beautiful 14" transparent OLED laptop.

Sony, on the other hand, are focusing on flexible OLEDs, and are serious about it. They have created a group whose goal is to launch a flexible-OLED business "as soon as possible".

The US Department of Energy has unveiled their Recovery Act Rewards. There are 5 OLED lighting projects in there, include two $4 million ones to GE and UDC. In fact both of these include setting up pilot production lines in the US. There's an interesting discussion whether UDC will actually become an OLED Lighting panel maker. GE says that cheap and efficient OLED Lighting panels will be possible in 2015.

Japan's Lumiotec has announced that they will start shipping OLED Lighting panel samples in February. The kits (which will include one 145mm x 145mm OLED panel, a controller and an AC adapter) will cost about $880. They plan to increase capacity in July to 40,000 annual panels. It's great to see a third company join Philips and Osram who already ship OLED panel samples.

Talking about Philips, they have announced that they have managed to improve the efficiency of their OLED lighting panels (from 10-20lm/W to over 20lm/W). They have also reduced the price of some of their panels (for example, the 44x47mm white rectangle is down to €72, from €166).