So - exactly one year after unveiling the 55EM9700 LGD announced today that they are accepting pre-orders for their 55" WRGB OLED TV in Korea - with deliveries to begin in the first week of February. The price? as expected, 11 million Won (about $10,000). Over the next several weeks they will announce launches in other markets. Obviously we expect the US to come soon, but apparently LGD is also preparing launches in Russia and China.

LG says they are "prepared to ramp up quickly to take the lead in the OLED segment". They see OLED as the "most transformational moment" in the TV industry since the introduction of the color TV 60 years ago.

I first heard about OLEDs and got interested in the technology back in 1998. 15 years, and finally we have the first real commercial OLED TV available. Well done LGD, now we're waiting for Samsung to launch their own TV as well. 2013 is going to be an exciting year!

The world's largest Consumer Electronics show, CES, will take place in a week in Las Vegas (January 8-11). CES always brings us new and exciting OLED announcements - new products, new technologies and new prototypes - and hopefully this year won't be different. CES 2012 was very exciting - LG and Samsung unveiled their 55" OLED TVs for the first time, getting rave reviews. OLED was actually the most twitted term at CES...

We do expect both Samsung and LG to show their OLED TVs again at CES. LG already announced they will bring a new OLED TV model, promising better technology and design (the new panel now weighs just 3.5 Kg). We hope that LG will also unveil launch plans in more countries besides Korea. Samsung hasn't said anything official yet, but they are expected to show their OLED TVs again, maybe newer models too. Hopefully Samsung will also announce pricing and launch-plans details, I cannot imagine they will allow LG to be the only one to offer OLED TVs for long.

LG and Samsung are clearly leading the way towards OLED TVs, but other companies are also developing the technology. Panasonic and Sony are collaborating on OLED TV technologies, with plans to start producing panels by 2014. Perhaps they will also unveil some prototypes. AU Optronics is already developing large OLED panels: the company unveiled a 32" OLED TV prototype back in November 2011, promising newer prototype samples by the end of 2012. Perhaps they'll have something interesting for us at CES...

There are some persistent rumors that Samsung will also unveil two new small OLED panels during CES. The first one will be a 4.99" Full HD panel (1920x1080, 441 PPI), which Samsung will use in their upcoming flagship phone, the Galaxy S4. The second panel will be an updated plastic-based flexible panel: 5.5" 1,280x720 (267 ppi). Samsung is expected to start flexible OLED production in 2013. These are all rumors, I'm personally not sure if Samsung will actually be able to mass produce such large flexible OLEDs so soon.

Obviously we also expect to learn about new products that use OLED displays - mobile phones, tablets, cameras and maybe other devices, too. It's gonna be an exciting event, for sure!

Both Samsung and LG are obviously going forward with their OLED TV plans (see above story for LG's official Korea launch), but it seems that the two companies are still struggling with technical issues. In an interesting blog post, DisplaySearch claims that both companies decided to put more emphasis in high-definition TVs (4K2K, or UHD), and delay OLED TV production. DisplaySearch also says that most consumers will prefer a larger and cheaper LCD TV over a high-end, slim OLED TV.

According to DisplaySearch, the yield in Samsung's and LGD's AMOLED TV fabs is still in the single digits, and even after repairing panels, the yield will be less than 30%. In addition, frit encapsulation is too fragile for large area TV, and so the panel lifetime is reduced. DisplaySearch now expects both Samsung and LGD to start mass production of UHD LCDs in 2013. They also said that Full-HD OLEDs will never be produced, but that's obviously not true... DisplaySearch expects both companies to unveil UHD OLEDs in 2013 (LG announced their plans for such a panel back at SID 2012) and mass production will only happen in 2014. If this is true this is quite a delay in OLED TV availability, although it was always assumed that production volume in 2013 will be very low.

In a more optimistic report, KoreaTimes says that next year Samsung plans to shift more investment from LCD to OLED. According to the article, Samsung Display will invest around 6 trillion won (about $5.58 billion), out of which only 29% in LCDs, and the rest (almost $4 billion) in OLED. That's actually lower than the planned $6 billion OLED investment for 2012 (we're not sure how much was the actual investment in 2012 though). According to KoreaTimes, Samsung will invest in both small/medium OLEDs and large ones (OLED TVs). The same reports suggests that Samsung will announce the Galaxy S4 during the Mobile World Congress in February 2013, and that the Galaxy Note 3 will have a 6.3" OLED panel. OLED TVs are only expected towards the end of 2013.

OSRAM presented a new luminaire (called the Rollercoaster) that features 30 transparent OLED panels (18x6.5 cm, 20 lm /W, 57% transparency). OSRAM says that they have made some significant advances and they now plan to start series-production of such panels in 2014.

The transparent panels were produced at OSRAM's pilot line at Regensburg and were developed as part of the TOPAS project. This is a bit strange as TOPAS uses phosphorescent OLEDs, and so we would have assumed they'd be more efficient. The German government has initiated a follow-up project in 2010 (which will run till September 2013) called GENESIS that aims to scale down to manufacture-compliant processes and substrate sizes. The current panels use glass substrates made by Saint-Gobain (based on the new Silverduct technology, and these enable lower cost production compared to earlier processes).

Apple OLED rumors never die, and we've got a unique one for you this time. According to a Chinese tech blog, Apple and Intel are jointly developing a bluetooth smart watch. This new iWatch (or whatever they'll call it) will have a 1.5" touch PMOLED, apparently made by RitDisplay.

I'm usually quite skeptic on Apple AMOLED rumors, because there's still not enough AMOLED capacity to be used in iPhone or iPod devices. But ramping up PMOLED capacity shouldn't' be a problem for RiTDisplay (which used to have larger capacity than today, but they shut down some lines due to financial problems). Anyway, if this is true, it's great news for my friends over at RiTDisplay.

Apple's smart watch accessory (if it exists) will probably be used to control your iOS device, make calls, view notifications, etc. Sony is offering a similar Android accessory called the SmartWatch (which also uses a PMOLED display, by the way, although at 1.3"). Sony's SmartWatch costs $109. The first-gen Sony LiveView, by the way, is now down to only $22.

DisplaySearch says that AMOLED displays have captured 6% of the small/medium display market in 2012 (this means displays that are 9" in size and smaller). They say that in 2015 penetration will more than double to 13%. In 2012 total OLED shipments (which include PMOLED and AMOLED panels) reached 191 million units, or 8.4% of the total small/medium display category. Total OLED shipments almost doubled from 2010.

DisplaySearch says that they expect new AMOLED producers to join Samsung and enter the market in 2013 - but AMOLED production is still very challenging (due to the very detailed and technical engineering and production experience required) and on average a successful entry takes five years.

2012 is over, now's the time to reflect back... here are the top 10 stories posted on OLED-Info in the past year, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. LG releases new photos, details on their upcoming 55" OLED TV (Jan 2)
2. The Galaxy Note 2 uses a non-pentile OLED display at 267 PPI (Sep 5)
3. Super AMOLED vs Super-LCD and HD-IPS on video (Feb 28)
4. DisplaySearch: LG's OLED TV will cost $8,000, will drop to $4,000 by end of 2013 (Jan 3)
5. Samsung flexible OLEDs to be branded YOUM? (Apr 8)
6. TABOLA transparent and structured OLEDs now shipping, we go hands on (Apr 23)
7. LG Chem starts mass producing 45 lm/W OLED panels, plans more efficient, flexible and transparent panels (Feb 9)
8. Philips releases an OLED lighting roadmap, sees flexible 1x1 meter OLEDs by 2018 (Feb 27)
9. Verbatim Velve OLED lighting panel hands on review (Jul 6)
10. LG to launch their 55" OLED TV in May for around $7,900 (Mar 27)

Here's for an awesome 2013. Hopefully this year we'll actually see OLED TV and flexible OLED launches... Have a happy new year!