Samsung says that its PMOLED business is losing its profitability, so they have to consider their option. They think they will change the production from PMOLED panels to OLED lighting panels. Another option is to shut down those lines.

Samsung already began R&D on white-light OLEDs, saying that it won't take a large investment to turn the production lines into white-light panels.

ETNews Korea also reports the LG Chemicals are also thinking about white-OLEDs, and have began R&D as well. LGDisplay stopped making PMOLED last year.

Via ETNews Korea

C|Net has posted a video interview of Kodak's OLED Wireless Digital Photo Frame - "Brilliant color, sharp image".

The OLED panel is 7.6", 16:9 aspect ratio, 800x480 resolution, white to black contrast ratio of 30,000:1, Made by CMEL.

Universal Display Corporation and SFC from Koea announced today that the companies have entered into a strategic business agreement to develop and commercialize highly-efficient phosphorescent OLED material systems.

Based on Universal Display’s proprietary UniversalPHOLED technology, Universal Display will support SFC’s development and marketing of phosphorescent hosts and other non-emitter materials that are matched to Universal Display’s phosphorescent OLED emitter materials. The companies will market and sell their respective materials that result from the collaboration. As part of the arrangement, SFC will transfer certain existing phosphorescent emitter materials to Universal Display, including manufacturing and sales of these materials.

What Hi-Fi has spoken to Samsung's VP of Flat-Panel development, who says LCDs will 'hold off OLEDs for many years'.  HS Kim says that OLEDs are pricier, and people will not pay more for such TVs. Also LCDs are advancing quickly in areas such as power consumption, so this isn't good news for OLED either.

On the plus side, HS Kim says Samsung can already make 50" OLED TVs, and may show them at CES.

This comes only a few days after Samsung said we'll see OLED laptops in 2010 and that OLEDs are going to be 'mainstream' soon.

After a long legal battle (over 3 years), patens in the SED TV case have been settled, and now Canon can launch their SED TVs. SED TVs are said to have a beautiful picure and viewing angle, but are as thin as an LCD or PDP display.

Canon is yet to mass-produce those kind of TVs (up until now they only produced prototypes). In fact Canon's president said they will not launch SED TVs immediatly - in fact because of the recent slump in TV prices, Canon will have a hard time introducing an expensive new TV.

Via Financial Times

Yesterday we reported that the TOPLESS project is showing an OLED lamp, we now have more info and a photo (to the right, click to enlarge - it is shown next to Joseph Swan's original incandescent light bulb design from 130 years ago).

The lamp is just a prototype (the cost to make them are very high currently). They used battery to power these - as they use only 4-5v to power. The efficiency is about 17Lm/W (as there is no out-coupling. With out-coupling the efficiency is over 30Lm/W), each panel operating at 3W. The panels are just 0.7mm thick, made by Sumation with TOPLESS materials (here's a link to a couple of photos of the panels).

At the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), several companies show products that use eMagin's OLED microdisplays.

Intevac Vision Systems (IVS) shows a near eye displays, bonicoluars with microdisplays, and a monocular product. NVIS are showing a hand-held display, while Rockwell are showing a transparent microviewer designed for remote viewing. 

Sensics are also showing new head-mounted displays. The xSight is using 12 of eMagin's 3D OLED-XL displays, and delivers a 123 panormaic field of view, with 1680x1050 pixels per eye. There's also an OEM version.

All in all there are 9 products that use eMagin's OLEDs.