August was a great month for the OLED industry, with several very exciting announcements - Samsung unveiling a 7.7" OLED tablet (and a 5.3" phone with a HD Super AMOLED display), Sony launching OLED microdisplays (and five products that use them) and LG unveiled their Ultra AMOLED displays. All in all we saw 12 high-profile products released in this month - all with AMOLED displays or microdisplays. It's no wonder that DisplaySearch are upbeat on AMOLEDs - with a forecast that OLED capacity will triple in 2012 and double again in 2013.

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The big story in August was obviously Samsung's introduction of two products with large OLED displays: the 7.7" Tablet and the 5.3" Galaxy Note phone. The 7.7" AMOLED display is the largest ever mass produced.

Both displays offer 1280x800 resolution, and obviously the pixel-pitch of the 5.3" display is much smaller. It seems that Samsung has developed two different AMOLED brands. The Super-AMOLED displays use PenTile technology and so each pixel is smaller, while Super AMOLED Plus use a regular RGB matrix. Using new manufacturing technology, Samsung managed to get the pixels even smaller now. The new 5.3" display is still a "Super AMOLED", but now Samsung adds an HD prefix - so the Super AMOLED HD we heard so much about is real, but Samsung actually calls it 'HD Super AMOLED'. The 7.7" panel on the tablet is a Super AMOLED Plus (no pentile).

Samsung also finally signed a long-term license agreement with Universal Display, and this agreement includes green PHOLED materials. According to our source, using green PHOLEDs was one of the elements that enabled Samsung's new HD AMOLED.

After months of rumors, Sony finally announced their 0.5" XGA (1024x768) and 0.7" 720p (1280x720) OLED microdisplays. It turns out that Sony is producing these OLED displays on their own. The 0.5" XGA display is used in cameras EVFs, and Sony already announced four cameras that use this new technology - the A77 and A65 DSLRs and the NEX-7 and NEX-5N mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (the NEX-5N doesn't come with the viewfinder, but you'll be able to buy it for $350).

The first product to use the 0.7" 720p microdisplay is the HMZ-T1 - a 3D Head Mounted Display that will be shipping in November (in Japan at first) for ¥60,000 (about $780).

To create those small pixels, Sony used a new design that uses white OLEDs and color filters. Sony also uses in-built D/A converters and driver electronics to create a small footprint. According to reviews, the image quality of those microdisplays is terrific - "...the camera's OLED viewfinder is the star of the show... bright and vibrant..."

LG announced a new display technology called Ultra AMOLED (and the first phone to sport them, the 3.8" Optimus Sol). LG says that they use new technology that makes Ultra AMOLEDs better under sunlight (and also offer better colors and reduced image degradation). We guess that (like Samsung's Super-AMOLED) these display include the touch-sensor in the display panel itself. Or perhaps they include a polarizing filter like Nokia's ClearBlack displays. The Optimus Sol also includes a new "Dark UI" which conserves power on the AMOLED display - around 20%-30% according to LG.

LG Display are currently making 4,000 monthly substrate in their new 4.5-Gen AMOLED plant (which is about 500,000 3" displays). The company announced they will not invest further in small AMOLED production and will focus on large panels for OLED TVs.

We recently heard some conflicting reports regarding LG Display's OLED TV plans. While the Nikkei Business Daily reports that LG plans to invest $2.8 billion in their upcoming 8.5-Gen OLED TV mass production fab (scheduled for 2H 2014 according to the report), we also hear that LG Display are cutting 2012 expenses by 25%, and plans "no new factories"

Of course the OLED plans are in 2014, and by this time it may be that LG's financials will be better, but LG are also planning to start pilot production of 55" OLED panels in 2012, and this will also require some large investment capital. We still do not have any official news from the company about their OLED plans.

Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) announced that Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting (PIOL), their joint-venture with Idemitsu Kosan will start shipping OLED lighting panels on September 1st. Those rather small (80x80mm), thin (2mm) and light (38g) OLED panels will feature no less than Ra90 color rendering (they say it's the world's highest) and 3,000 cd/m² - the world's brightens panels. The efficiency is 30 lm/W and lifetime (D70) is 10,000.

PEW itself will start offering OLED lighting modules in December 2011 - which will include the OLED panel, a frame and a built-in control circuit.

PEW also released a development roadmap for their OLED Lighting panels. As we said before, current panels will be 80x80mm and offer 30 lm/W, 10,000 hours of lifetime and 3,000 cd/m² luminance. By 2016, the company expects the panels to improve to 100 lm/W, 20,000 hours, 5,000 cd/m² and to grow to 300x300mm. By 2019 the panels will offer 130 lm/W, 40,000 hours and be 600x600mm in size. PEW also predicts that by 2019 the company will be able to offer flexible, color-tunable and transparent panels.

PIOL also announced a license agreement with Universal Display, and will pay royalties and buy PHOLED materials.

OSRAM announced that they have launched their new OLED lighting pilot production line in Regensburg, Germany. The company says that they invested about 20 million euros on this project so far (originally they estimated that the total investment in the research and production center at Regensburg will reach 50 million euros).

OSRAM says that the new pilot production line will enable them to double the brightness of the OLEDs and to enhance the durability (they probably mean Lifetime) and efficiency. It will also enable them to produce transparent OLEDs, although they haven't announced any such product yet. OSRAM further says that when the expansion of the production center is complete, manufacturing costs are expected to decline by 90%!