On March 14 Samsung announced their new flagship phone for 2013, the Galaxy S4. As expected, it sports a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1080, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display behind a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. This phone will launch towards the end of April worldwide (on 327 carriers in 155 countries). The S4 seems to be more of an upgrade to the GS3 than a revolutionary new handset, but it does sport a larger display, a faster CPU, more memory and a bigger battery (but still manage to weigh less and be 8% thinner than the GS3).

Obviously we're interested in this new display (which was actually unveiled at CES 2013). It's likely that this display uses green PHOLED emitter materials, and this increases the display efficiency by 25%, although we don't have this confirmed yet. Some other reports suggest that Samsung adopted a new sub pixel design with diamond pixels. But this isn't confirmed yet. According to analysts, Samsung Display started producing these 5" Full-HD AMOLED panels in February at a rate of 3 million units per moth (this will grow to almost 10 million monthly units in coming months).

The GS4 includes all sorts of new software applications and smart UI. One of these new applications is called Adapt Display, and this one enables extensive display calibration adjustments. According to DisplayMate, this could be a "major display advancement and a win for Samsung and AMOLED displays".

The GS4 isn't shipping yet, but IHS iSuppi already posted a "virtual teardown", saying that the bill of materials is about $236. According to iSuppli, the 5" Full-HD Super AMOLED display costs $75. As the 4.8" WXGA AMOLED on the S3 costs $65, this represents the largest cost increase for the S4 compared to its predecessor (The cost of making an S3 is estimated at $208). The cost of the AMOLED display is over 30% of the cost of the entire GS4. DisplaySearch, by the way, says that a 4.8" HD AMOLED costs over $50 (compared to $36 for a 4.7" HD LCD).

One thing for certain: Samsung expects the GS4 to become their fastest selling phone ever. According to a UK retailer, pre-registration are up 446% in the first 3 days compared to the S3. The GS4 "is the one to watch for in 2013".

At CES 2013 Panasonic unveiled a 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel prototype that was produced using an all-printing method. Now Sumitomo Chemical revealed (as part of their 2013-2015 plan presentation) that this TV prototype used the company's PLED materials. Panasonic has been working on OLED printing technologies for quite some time and back in 2009, they teamed up with Sumitomo to jointly-develop OLED TVs, based on Sumitomo's P-OLED materials and technology. I thought this partnership is not active anymore, but evidently I was wrong on that one.

According to some reports Panasonic and Sony are considering to launch an OLED TV production JV (currently their collaboration only involves production technology). It's possible that this JV will use Panasonic's printing technology an PLED materials, but it's also possible they will opt to use Sony's technology which uses SMOLED and an evaporation process.

In 2011 Sumitomo built a large P-OLED material factory aiming for OLED TV applications in a several billion yen investment. The annual output of their new Osaka plant will be enough to produce 4-5 million 40" OLED TVs. The company also says that the performance level of their PLED materials is good enough for OLED TVs. Their blue OLED emitter now has a lifetime of over 20,000 hours.

Sumitomo expects the PLED television market to take off in 2015. This makes sense as earlier reports suggested that Panasonic aims to release their first TVs in 2015. Launching the PLED business (for OLED lighting and displays) is one of the major business initiatives for Sumitomo in 2013-2015.

Japan's Lighting Fair 2013 took place on early March, and brought us some interesting OLED lighting news. First up is NEC Lighting - with their exciting announcement that they developed the world's most efficient OLED device at 156 lm/W. This device (co-developed with Yamagata University's researchers) is 2x2 mm in size with a brightness of 1,000 cd/m². NEC said that the emitter materials were developed in Yamagata University's Kido Lab. Unfortunately NEC did not reveal the structure and technologies used to fabricate this OLED. They did however unveil new transparent OLED panels that they want to commercialize by 2015. They developed a prototype 20x20 cm panel that features 70% transmittance, 35 lm/W efficacy and 20,000 hours lifetime. This panel was developed in collaboration with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Organization (NEDO).

Verbatim also announced new, efficient panels - their 3rd-Gen Velve color-tunable panels that feature 51.6 lm/W (the panels are 123x123 mm in size, weigh 193 grams and offer a brightness of 2,000 cd/m²). Toshiba meanwhile unveiled some interesting new prototypes of their own. The first one is a wirelessly-powered OLED (using an electromagnetic induction-type wireless power transmission technology). Toshiba showed an installation that uses these, and the idea is that the user can freely move the panels around without any cables. Toshiba also unveiled transparent OLED panels that use a unique device structure that emits most of the light (over 95%) in only one direction.

The OLED lighting market is still in its infancy, and even research companies find it hard to predict what's the market going to look like in the future. Nanomarkets posted two updates with their own interesting views. Nanomarkets are still optimistic about the OLED lighting market, but they do not see mass adoption coming soon. In fact, in a recent blog post they say that OLED lighting takeoff will not happen till 2017. Previously they estimated that it may start in 2015. Nanomarkets also revealed that they see three possible scenarios for OLED Lighting : mass adoption (unlikely in the near future because of massive investment funds required and a missing "OLED Champion Company"), a growing niche market and the death of OLED lighting. This is an interesting article, well worth a read .

According to Reuters, Korea's Doosan is going to acquire Novaled for $270-360 million. The deal is not final, but we hear that they expect to finalize it and announce it soon. A year ago Novaled announced plans for an IPO on the NASDAQ with an aim to raise $200 million, but indeed it's been a while since we heard any news on the IPO. In 2011, Novaled reported €17.4 in revenues and a profit of €1.2 million. It is estimated that sales in 2012 were about the same with a higher profit of over  ;€3 million. Obviously they expect sales and revenues to increase sharply in coming years as the OLED display (and perhaps lighting) market takes off.

Novaled supplies OLED materials to both Samsung and LG Display, and in fact an industry insider once told me that "everybody uses Novaled's materials". Anyway, this seems to be a good deal for Novaled, and will be one of the largest deals in the OLED industry (joining the $285 million CDT acquisition by Sumitomo in 2007 and the $250 million UDC raised in 2011). It's a very large valuation (16X sales and over 100X profit) and as Doosan is the buyer, it hopefully means Novaled will continue to supply materials to other companies.

IHS iSuppli says that small AMOLED displays for mobile phone applications will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26% from 2013 to 2017. Shipments in 2013 will reach over 195 million units, and this will grow to over 447 million in 2017. AMOLED mobile handset market share will grow from 7.9% in 2013 to 15.2% in 2017.

Interestingly, iSuppli estimates that the AMOLED market share for 4" or larger displays will only grow from 23% to 24.4% by 2017. This means that most of the AMOLED growth will come from smaller displays, and that major handset makers besides Samsung (i.e. Apple, HTC and LG) will not adopt AMOLED displays. This seems rather unlikely to me. Especially when you consider flexible OLEDs - and that LG already said that these displays will bring "real value" for mobile devices.

During March we reached 2,000 fans on Facebook (now it's actually up to 2,060) - and I think that's a reason for a small celebration... and here it is. I'd like to say thanks for all our loyal readers that help us spread the OLED news around. If you're not a fan already, you can hop over to our Facebook page and become one now.

OLEDs are getting more popular by the day. Besides the 2,060 fans on Facebook, we got over 1,100 Twitter followers and over 13,000 newsletter subscribers. Oh, and 50 Google+ friends. So now you can choose your favorite social network and get your OLED news and updates easily...