Kateeva is a US based startup that was established in 2009 to develop OLED ink-jet deposition technology originally developed at MIT. The company has been been in stealth-mode for years, and now finally they have unveiled their technology and system, branded YIELDJet. Kateeva claims that their system, the first one engineered from the ground up for OLED mass production, will dramatically improve yields and drive production costs lower.

Kateeva says that this was achieved by three major technical breakthroughs: is features a production-worthy pure nitrogen process chamber, which doubles the lifetime in certain applications, it reduces particles by as much as 10X thanks to a specialized mechanical design and it offers exceptional film coating uniformity with a process window that’s 5X wider than standard technologies.

Click here to read our interview with Kateeva's president regarding the company's technology and business.

A few days ago Samsung held their Analyst Day 2013 with a lot of fascinating information regarding the company's present business and its future plans. It was clear from Samsung Display's presentation that the company sees OLED as the leading future display technology and puts a great emphasis on flexible displays. They see flexible OLED penetration into the mobile display market reaching 40% by 2018 (up from 0.2% in 2013), and Samsung Electronics CEO actually promised to bring fully-foldable screens in 2015.

Samsung updated that they'll soon produce the 500-millionths AMOLED panel - their current rate is over 560,000 panels per day (up from 470,000 per day in 2012). The company's capacity is 140,000 5.5-Gen glass sheets per month (up 27% compared to 2012). Going forward, OLED will take up more and more of SDC's CapEx as LCD expenditure will continue to decline.

You can read more about Samsung's current OLED business and future plans here.

Universal Display (and its shareholders) had a busy month in November. First up was the Japanese IP high court decision to reverse the JPO's broad claim invalidation on one of UDC's fundamental PHOLED patents. This means that UDC's patent will be withheld in Japan. Three weeks later the European EPO revoked one of the company's basic patents (patent #1449238). The implications of the EPO's decision are not yet clear.

On November 9th, UDC reported their Q3 2013 results - which were excellent and far above expectations. UDC reported $32.8 in revenues (up from $12.5 in Q2 2012) and a net income of $5.5 million. Those excellent results are "directly attributable to the commercial adoption of its red emitter, green emitter and green host materials". PPG opened a new OLED materials production facility to handle UDC's expanded development and production.

The final bit of news from UDC was that the company signed a collaboration and evaluation agreement with Philips's OLED lighting unit, under which UDC will start supplying Philips with sample PHOLED materials. Philips is already using PHOLEDs in the Lumiblade Plus panel (but this uses Konica Minolta's design). They are also probably using phosphorescent materials in the GL350 Gen 2 (as it achieves 55 lm/W) but I'm not sure who supplies the materials to that panel.

Disclosure: the author of this newsletter holds some shares in Universal Display

Taiwan has a large display industry, but in recent years it seems that it is lagging behind Korea, Japan and China in AMOLED technologies. We asked a local industry expert to check out the three main Taiwanese AMOLED companies (AUO, Innolux and RiTDisplay), and he came back with some interesting stories.

We already reported that AUO started AMOLED production in their 4.5-Gen fab in Singapore, and it turns out that the company is producing 5" 720p (295 ppi) panels. AUO's yield is still low (around 40%) and they will only ramp capacity up to 5,000 monthly substrates. The company also downsized their OLED TV team. Innolux isn't ready for mass production any time soon, but they still keep developing OLEDs. RiTDisplay halted the a-Si AMOLED program and is focused on PMOLEDs for smart watches. They're not involved with Apple (which will most likely adopt LGD's flexible AMOLEDs).

Israel's OREE developed proprietary technology that enables them to offer inorganic-LED panels which are so thin that they are quite similar to OLED panels in form (almost... more on this below), yet are efficient, very bright and a lot cheaper than current OLEDs. They were kind enough to invite me to their offices for a visit and also sent me a couple of samples for a review.

OREE's technology is very interesting and I think anyone interested in OLED Lighting should be aware of the company's solutions. Read my review and technology spotlight article here.