On September 9th, Apple unveiled their new iPhones and the company's first smartwatch, the Watch. This is a square-bodied touch device, that pairs with an iPhone. Some people are excited by this new device, and some aren't. I don't really see the point in such a smart watch myself, but I have learned not to underestimate Apple. But what we're really interested in is the Watch's display.

When Apple announced the Watch, they did not disclose the display type - they just said it was a "Flexible Retina Display" which doesn't really say much. Apple did say it is covered in Sapphire (glass on the sports model).

At first I thought that Apple did not yet decide if the display is an OLED or an LCD. After all the Watch will only ship in "early 2015" so this is obviously still not ready for production. But a couple of weeks after the unveiling and I can say I'm convinced that the Watch uses a plastic-based AMOLED display produced by LG Display. While I cannot disclose all my sources, I can point you to Jennifer Colegrove from Touch Display Research who's 100% positive it is an AMOLED and DisplaySearch who states that the plastic OLED in the Watch costs $27 to make, including the touch panel and the cover glass (DisplaySearch assumes LG Display's yields are 60%). If that's still not enough, you can hop over to LG Display's official newsroom for a sort of confirmation.

This AMOLED panel is very small, and even if Apple manages to sell hundreds of millions of Watch devices it is not very significant in terms of OLED production capacity. But all in all this is great news and when it becomes public it may give a terrific validity and a great boost to OLED technology. We've been waiting for Apple to adopt OLEDs for years now (I remember Barry Young referring to Apple as part of the "axis of evil" back in 2012) and now finally in 2015 we'll see the first Apple OLED product.

In early September Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 4, the company's 2014 flagship phablet device. As expected the Note 4 has a 5.7" QHD (2560x1440) Super AMOLED display and it's housed in a premium metal (aluminum) frame, Samsung's new design line. The GN4 will ship in the US on October 17.

Before the announcement, rumors started circulating - stating that the Note 4 will use a flexible curved OLED phone. I said I do not think this is likely - but happily I was quite wrong. Together with the Note 4, Samsung announced the Note 4 Edge - a variant that has a plastic-based OLED that is wrapped around the right edge.

The Note 4 Edge sports a 5.6" QHD (2560x1440) display, with an extra 160-pixels on the right edge (Samsung calls this QHD+). The bent edge (besides being unique and probably very cool) can show notifications, application icons or simply controls when you want the full screen to show a video for example. The Note 4 Edge is very similar to the YOUM OLED prototype unveiled in January 2013.

It took Samsung a year and a half to commercialize this technology, but it seems they made a good job. DisplayMate reports that the Note 4 Edge plastic-base display performs just as good as the glass-based panel used in the regular Note 4. And the Note 4 is the best mobile display ever tested at DisplayMate!

Now we just need to wait and see whether the Note 4 Edge is actually mass produced and sold worldwide - unlike the Galaxy Round that was only ever sold in Korea.

LG is currently the only company that produces OLED TV panels, and they seem to be pushing ahead as fast as they can, trying enjoy their lead (a company official recently said that they are 2-3 years ahead of the competition, having already reached a 80% production yield). LG now ships their new Full-HD 55" curved OLED TV, the 55EC9300, in the US, and it costs $2,999 - (lower than the official launch price which was $3,499 a couple of weeks ago).

LG also plans to ship 4K OLED TVs in the US in October. The 65" 65EC9700 has an official price of $10,000 - but the retail price will apparently be $6,250. This is still a lot lower than the price of the 55" FHD OLED TV last year ($15,000). The 77" 77EC9800 will launch through "select retailers" in November, and the official price is $25,000.

LG has high hopes for its OLED business. LG Display expects its OLED unit to turn profitable in 2015 (after having lost an estimated $500 million in 2013). Some analysts estimate that OLED earnings will reach $150 million in 2015 - this may include small flexible OLED panels too. According to digitimes LG Electronics lowered its 2015 OLED TV sale target to 800,000.

A few months ago, an LG executive said that LG Display plans to produce over 5 million panels in 2015. So now people say that LG is much less optimistic about OLED TVs. But we have to remember that even if LG produces only 55" panels (currently they make 65" and 77" as well), and reach 100% yields (highly unrealistic) - they will still be able to produce only 1.8 million panels in 2015. And of course LGD is not supplying just to LG Display - there are several Chinese OLED makers that already ship OLED TVs with LGD"s panels, and other makers (including Panasonic and Sony) are also in talks with LG Display for supply deals

In March 2014 Konica Minolta announced that it is starting to construct a R2R flexible OLED lighting fab with plans to start production in the fall of 2014. The company now updates that the equipment is now running, and first panel samples are being produced. KM still aims to start shipping commercial products in the fall.

Konica invested ¥10 billion (almost $100 million) in the new fab, which will have a monthly capacity of a million panels. This will represent a breakthrough in OLED lighting capacity.

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KM's fab will produce both white and color-tunable flexible panels. The white panel will 150x60 mm in size (0.35 mm thick) and will weight 5 grams. The color-tunable will be smaller (50x30 mm, 0.29 mm thick, 0.6 grams). Both panels will be flexible with a curvature radius of 10 mm.

Konica Minolta recently broke the world's OLED efficiency record with a 139 LM/W panel. The first panels out of KM's new factory will probably not be so highly efficient, but hopefully they will be close. Commercial OLED lighting efficiency is increasing steadily, and LG Chem plans to start producing 100 lm/W panels by the end of the year.

Early in September, Germany hosted the international consumer electronics tradeshow, the IFA. Several companies had OLED TV prototypes on show - all of them using panels supplied by LG Display (expect Samsung). So first up is indeed Samsung, that showed curved 4K OLED TV prototypes. Samsung did not abandon the OLED TV market, but they do not have any plans to release such OLED TVs in the near future.

Panasonic also unveiled new 65" 4K OLED TV prototypes, which seemed like concept models (panels in a stand). Panasonic is probably using OLED Panels supplied by LG Display.

Changhong also showed a 65" OLED TV prototype. There was very little information on this prototype. Grundig unveiled their first OLED TV prototype at 55-inch

. It's not clear if this panel (probably supplied by LG Display) was a 4K or an FHD one.

Researchers from the University of Michigan developed a new phosphorescent OLED emitter that extends the lifetime by a factor of 10. Researchers have been trying to develop an efficient, long-lasting blue PHOLED emitter for years now, and this may be the breakthrough everybody's been waiting for.

OLED makers SDC and LGD already use red and green PHOLED emitter materials in their OLED panels. While phosphorescent emitters do not last as long as fluorescent emitters, they are much more efficient. All commercial OLED displays currently use a fluorescent blue emitter as the best PHOLED blue to date only lasted for a few hundred hours.

A commercial blue PHOLED is very exciting for the OLED industry. Universal Display estimates that adding a blue PHOLED to an AMOLED display will reduce the power consumption by about 30% (see chart above). It will probably take years before this technology is commercialized and adopted in OLED panels on the market, but this is the first time we hear of a promising blue PHOLED approach.

< p>Several research groups and companies are trying to develop more efficient fluorescent emitters, trying to achieve PHOLED-like efficiency without the heavy metals. Professor Chihaya Adachi at Kyushu University is developing TADF (Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence) emitters that seem promising.

TADF based OLEDs are also being commercialized by Cynora (based on copper). Researchers from the Universities of Bonn, Regensburg, Utah and the MIT also developed a new method to enable phosphorescence OLEDs without any heavy atoms at room temperature.