During May we heard reports that Samsung Electronics scrapped their plans for an OLED TV fab - due to low yields. Instead of that fab, Samsung will setup a new facility to make small/medium sized panels. The investment in this new fab is expected to reach $3 to $5 billion.

According to the reports, Samsung will use this fab to produce displays for tablets and wearable devices. Samsung is expected to release two OLED tablets (8.4" and 10.5", both WQXGA) on June 12 in an unpacked event in NY.

It disappointing to see that Samsung is not pushing into the OLED TV market - at least not as aggressively as LG. This is probably just a setback for Samsung and I'm sure they will return to the OLED TV market within a year or two.

Samsung's flexible OLED production ramp-up is also slower than expected. When Veeco bought Synos for its Encapsulation technology (for $185 million), they expected SDC to start its flexible OELD manufacturing ramp in 2014. Now Veeco reports that they did not get the purchase orders they expected. They are still optimistic on the technology - it's just that SDC delayed their plans (according to Veeco).

As the Japanese display and TV makers are struggling to turn a profit, they are all considering their OLED plans,as producing OLED TVs is a very expensive and risky business. In the past month, several reports from Japan updated us on the OLED industry there.

In December 2013 Sony and Panasonic announced that they canceled their OLED TV joint-development effort. The two Japanese companies said they will continue to develop OLED technologies independently. But reports from Japan suggests that Sony is putting its OLED TV plans on hold, to focus on UHD LCDs. A day later Sony denied those rumors.

A different report from Japan stated that Panasonic also decided to withdraw from the OLED TV business. That report said that Panasonic aims to sell their OLED unit to Japan Display.

A final report informed us that Panasonic, Sony and Japan Display are considering to setup an OLED joint venture - which will mostly be owned by INCJ. It's not clear if that JV will focus on small/medium displays or OLED TV panels. JDI stated a few weeks earlier that for the long term, OLED is the main focus of the company. Some other reports suggest that both Sony and Panasonic are in talks with LGD to supply OLED TV panels. So the two Japanese companies may want to enter the market without the large investments required for the actual panel production.

LG Chem announced that they are going to cut the prices of their OLED panels at Q3 2014. LG Chem is aiming to cut their prices by about 60% (!) - from about $600/Klm to about $200/Klm.

LG Chem explains that this price drop was possible because the company changed the glass substrate and the encapsulation materials in their production process. This enables them to create thinner, light and cheaper panels without any effect on the performance. LG Chem will first upgrade and lower the price of their popular 100x100 mm and 320x110 mm panels, and later on they will upgrade all of their panels.

LG Chem currently offer eight different OLED panels, including the world's largest panel at 320x320 mm. LG Chem's panels feature 60 lm/W and a lifetime of 40,000 hours (LT70).

It personally seems to me that we are at a very critical time for the OLED lighting markets. In the past few months we've seen several promising developments - most notably Konica Minolta's $100 million R2R flexible color-tunable OLED production fab. Hopefully we'll soon see LG Chem and Philips (and maybe others as well) commit to large-scale production fabs which will lower prices dramatically and may help initiate real commercial OLED lighting adoption.

During a conference call with investors, AUO updated that it is sampling mobile phone panels and have provided samples to Chinese phones makers.

Even though it was reported that AUO OLED mass production back in October 2013, they are still not actually producing any panels. They now aim to start production in Q2 or Q3 2014, and in any case the capacity is "not so huge".

Earlier this month AUO announced that they developed a new ultraslim 5.7" WQHD (2560x1440, 513 PPI) AMOLED panel. According to our sources AUO is producing samples of 5" 720p (295 ppi) panels (in their 4.5-Gen AFPD fab in Singapore). According to our information, AUO's yield is still low at around 40%. The company's OLED capacity is only 5,000 substrates per month. AUO's technology for small displays is similar to Samsung's (LTPS, FMM, direct-emission).

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q1 2014 - and the company had another great quarter. Revenues were $37.8 million (compared to $15 million in Q1 2013) and net income was $4.0 million.

Green emitter and host sales were very good - after investors were worried because of reports that SDC switched a supplier to Cheil Industries. UDC more or less confirmed that the GS5 uses new red and green PHOLED emitters - and this is how Samsung managed to increase the efficiency by 25% compared to the GS4.

UDC announced that they signed a new customer agreement with BOE Display in China (this is an evaluation agreement). UDC now sells materials to 25 companies - virtually all display companies and some lighting companies.

Disclosure: the author of this newsletter holds some shares in UDC

According to an industry insider, Google is in talks with MicroOLED to supply OLED microdisplays for the next generation Google Glass. Google currently use LCoS microdisplays by Himax (they even bought a stake in the Himax Display in July 2013). Our source says that Google isn't happy with the performance of the LCoS microdisplay and wants to upgrade to an OLED. This will be a huge win for the French startup if true.

Back in 2013 it was reported that Google are in talks with Samsung Display to supply OLED microdisplays for the next-gen Glass product. Samsung Display indeed developed a 0.6" XGA OLED microdisplay back in 2011, but as far as I know SDC is not producing any microdipslays at the moment. Other possible OLED Microdisplay makers are eMagin, OLightek, Sony and Dresden Microdisplay.

Switzerland based Fluxim (an OLED-Info sponsor), will launch a new version (4.0) of their simulation software SETFOS in June. The new version adds a new light scattering module for assessing the OLED light outcoupling enhancement. Fluxim also launched the 2nd version of their PAIOS all-in-one OLED and OPV characterization platform. The new PAIOS comes with enhanced measurement accuracy and ranges and ever enhanced ease of use. You can contact Fluxim directly at info@fluxim.com

Fluxim would also like to invite OLED-Info readers to the International Conference on Simulation of Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics in Mallorca in October 2014. We welcome abstract submissions for oral as well as poster contributions. Fluxim will also take part and provide training sessions on PAIOS and SETFOS. You can find out more about the event here: www.fluxim.com/simoep14