Samsung Electronics says that they plan to launch products with flexible OLED panels next year, probably starting with mobile phones, then followed by tablets and other portable devices. The company is actually hoping to introduce the products in the "earlier part of 2012". This was reported before, although up until now Samsung said the plan is to launch flexible OLEDs in 2013 or 2014, so it's good to see they are advancing more quickly than they thought before. Samsung's flexible AMOLEDs will be fabricated on a plastic (Polymide) substrate and will be able to withstand high temperature. The displays can be bendable - but we assume that the first products will use them inside rigid glass cases - so it'll actually be "curved" displays and not flexible ones.

Samsung also announced that they sold 30 million Galaxy S and SII smartphones. According to earlier reports, they sold around 10 million SII phones and 20 million Galaxy S phones. Samsung is positioning itself as the leading smartphone maker - and it seems that virtually all top models use OLED displays. However, a couple of weeks ago it was reported that the company is actually delaying expansion in the second and third lines of their 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab. This is actually rather strange as in the coming months we'll see several high-end AMOLED devices launching - including the Motorola RAZR, the Galaxy Nexus, the Galaxy Tab 7.7, Nokia's Lumia 800 and the PSP Vita and others.

AUO has given us some very interesting updates in October. It seems that the company is set to become the third AMOLED producer (after Samsung and LG Display) - the company launched a new 4.3" AMOLED panel with about 250 ppi, and they are already shipping samples to clients. Mass production will begin in Q2 2012. This panel uses an RGB matrix and the company said its quality will be superior to Samsung's AMOLED panels which use a PenTile matrix (of course samsung is also offering the RGB-matrix Super AMOLED Plus displays). AUO's current capacity is 7000-8000 monthly substrates in their Gen-3.5 fab. In 2H 2012 the company plans to bring their Gen-4.5 fab online with a monthly capacity of 15,000 substrates.

But AUO isn't just working on small AMOLED panels. The company unveiled a new 32" Full-HD OLED TV prototype, which uses a Metal Oxide TFT as backplane and is only 3mm thick. AUO is also showing a new 6" 400x300 transparent OLED and a 4" 240x320 flexible OLED.

Nokia is showing a beautiful new bendable device prototype called the Kinetic. The idea is that you can bend and twist the whole device to perform certain actions: for example bending it towards you is used to select an option or zoom-in on an image. Nokia didn't say what kind of display technology is used in this device , but it's most likely a flexible OLED. The display is 4" in size and has impressive viewing angles according to reports. In the past two years we've seen several companies present flexible/bendable OLED Prototypes: Samsung, LG and UDC, Toshiba, Sony, AUO and the FDC with UDC.

OLED lighting technology development seems to continue happen in an accelerate phase. First we have news from the Fraunhofer IPMS who are developing a roll-to-roll process to make flexible large area OLED lighting panels. They unveiled a new 30cm-wide flexible OLED lighting panel on a metal foil, fabricated at COMEDD. In fact they say that this demonstrates that they developed all necessary process steps for a complete production of flexible OLEDs in a roll-to-roll tool: from the structuring of the substrate up to the lamination of barrier foils.

Philips made some interesting headlines a few weeks ago when they estimated that OLED lighting panel prices will drop sharply soon. In fact the company said that their cheapest OLED panels will drop to â'¬10-â'¬20 in two years (from â'¬70 today). Philips will be able to lower their production costs when the new â'¬40 million Aachen OLED lighting production line will go on line (this production line will expand their capacity 10 times).

The other large European OLED maker, OSRAM, has unveiled a beatiful large OLED installation at the Qubique Berlin Tempelhof 2011 exhibition. The 'Qube' uses over 1,400 round Orbeos penels, and was designed by Labme, a new open-source OLED lighting design platform. Osram also announced that the display windows at the Quartier 206 department store in Berlin are now using round and rectangular OLED lighting panels.

Konica Minolta meanwhile unveiled their next-generation lighting brand called Symfos. The first Symfos product is the OLED-010K OLED lighting panel sample kit - which is now shipping. The kit includes four OLED panels, and external driver box and an AC adapter. The OLED itself uses all phosphorescent emitters (KM is using Universal Display's PHOLED technology) and offers 45 lm/W. This is the same panel that Philips is offering (as the Lumiblade Plus). In fact Philips is producing this panel for Konica Minolta, as was announced in July 2011. We do not know the price of the OLED-010K kit, but Philips is selling each Lumiblade Plus panel for â'¬120.

Finally the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced its third round of funding for manufacturing R&D projects. Two projects will receive $10 million together. There are four topic areas, out of which two are focused on OLEDs. The DOE also awarded $1 million to UDC - an SBIR phase II project to demonstrate further gains the performance of large-area phosphorescent based OLED lighting panels through enhanced thermal management techniques.

IDTechEx are now offering 30% discount for OLED-Info readers for the Printed Electronics 2011 exhibition- that will take place in Santa Clara (USA) on November 30th. You can find more information about the conference here. To claim the discount, simply use the coupon PEU11OLED.

If you're new to the OLED world, things may seem to be advancing at a very quick phase. OLED capacity is booming, OLED lighting is advancing and flexible and transparent panels are "right around the corner". If you want a comprehensive guide to OLED technology, industry and markets, check out The OLED Handbook, written by Ron Mertens - OLED-Info's editor in chief.

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Larry Shiu-Lun Lai (PhD), Research Officer, The University of Hong Kong

The OLED Handbook: $97 for the digital (PDF) edition and $149.99 for the printed edition.