Although Nikkei did not list a source for the announcement, it seems fairly certain that OLED technology is growing ever closer to mainlined viability. As it stands, Toshiba Mobile Display Co. will be among the first Japanese companies to mass produce OLED panels. While their initial run will be limited only to mobile sized screens, the process will presumably garner a refined, more cost effective means of production, which may lead to mainstream availability of larger OLED screens.

Currently, it holds more than 600 American patents and more than 2800 international patents, making it the largest owner of AMOLED technology patents.

As of April 2009, Samsung has released one phone using the AMOLED display in the United States, the Impression for AT&T.

On October 1, 2007, Sony became the first company to announce an OLED television for commercial sale. The XEL-1 11″ OLED Digital Television sells for $2,499.99 in the United States and Canada. In January 2009, handheld computer manufacturer OQO introduced the smallest Windows Vista computer with an OLED display.

Newer OLED applications include signs and lighting. The first OLED lights were commercialized in May 2009. Philips Lighting opened up a webshop, where OLED lighting samples under the brand name ‘Lumiblade’ can be ordered online.

In March 2009. Samsung Electronics launched a 2.8″ AMOLED capacitive touchscreen phone called the S8300 UltraTOUCH.

In April 2009, Samsung brought the first phone using an AMOLED display to the United States, the Impression on AT&T. The Impression has a 3.2″ WQVGA AMOLED.

In May 2009. Samsung Electronics launched a 3.7″ WVGA AMOLED capacitive touchscreen phone called the i8910 Omnia HD.

In June 2009. Samsung Electronics launched a 3.1″ WVGA AMOLED resistive touchscreen phone called the S8000 Jet.

In July 2009. Samsung Electronics launched a 3.7″ WVGA AMOLED 3G full-touchscreen phone called the Omnia II i8000 with Samsung’s own touchwiz ui version 2.0.

In August 2009, Sprint Nextel will sell phones from Samsung Electronics featuring advanced AMOLED display technology. Company executives claimed its technology provided longer battery life and enhanced video and photo images.

In September 2009, Microsoft launched a 3.3″ Sixteenth HD1080 OLED capacitive multi-touch portable media player called the Zune HD.

OLEDs can be used in High-Resolution Holography (Volumetric display). Professor Orbit showed on May 12, 2007, EXPO Lisbon the potential application of these materials to reproduce three-dimensional video.

OLEDs could also be used as solid-state light sources. OLED efficiency and lifetime already exceed those of incandescent light bulbs, and OLEDs are investigated worldwide as a source of general illumination; an example is the EU OLLA project.

On March 11, 2008 GE Global Research demonstrated the first successful roll-to-roll manufactured OLED, marking a major milestone towards cost effective production of commercial OLED technology. The four year, $13 million research project was carried out by GE Global Research, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Chi Mei Corporation of Taiwan, demonstrated a 25″ Low-Temperature Polycrystalline silicon Active Matrix OLED at the Society of Information Displays (SID) conference in Los Angeles, CA, USA on May 20–22, 2008.

On June 5, 2009 DuPont demonstrated a new material that can be printed, so called solution deposition. The breakthrough is the ability to produce economically scalable and durable OLED displays at the 2009 International Symposium, May 31-June 5 2009, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, San Antonio, TX, USA

The use of OLEDs is also being investigated for the treatment of cancer by photodynamic therapy.

On 30 Aug 2009, South Korea’s LG Electronics said it would launch a 15-inch television set using AM-OLED displays for sale in November.

According to Isuppli Corp, upward momentum of OLED Shipments for primary cell phone displays is their expectation in coming years. They claimed that global shipments of OLED main cell phone displays would rise to 178 million units in 2015, up from 22.2 million in 2009. In other words, the shipments will rise eightfold by 2015. Therefore, it’s evident that the manufacture of OLED display and OLED equipment by Samsung , DuPont, Anwell, Chi Mei Corporation, etc has expanded dramatically in recent years.

In 2004 Sony released the Sony CLIÉ PEG-VZ90, the first commercial device to feature an OLED screen.

In 2006 Sony introduced the MZ-RH1 Portable Minidisc Recorder, which has an OLED screen.

At the Las Vegas CES 2007, Sony showcased 11-inch (28 cm, resolution 960×540) and 27-inch[59] (68.5 cm, full HD resolution at 1920×1080) models claiming million-to-one contrast ratio and total thickness (including bezels) of 5 mm. Sony released a commercial version of this television in Japan in December, 2007.

Sony plans to begin manufacturing 1000 11-inch OLED TVs per month for market testing purposes. Sony has begun selling an 11-inch OLED Digital TV (XEL-1) for $2499.99 CAD

On May 25, 2007, Sony publicly unveiled a video of a 2.5-inch flexible OLED screen which is only 0.3 millimeters thick.[63] The screen displayed images of a bicycle stunt and a picturesque lake while the screen was flexed. On October 1 2007, Sony announced it will sell 11-Inch OLED TVs for 200,000 yen (1,962.51 USD as of 4/1/08) from December 2007, only in Japan[64] and with an initial production of 2000 units per month.

At the CES 2008, Sony showcased the Walkman X series with 3” OLED touchscreen.

On April 16, 2008, at “Display 2008″, Sony showed a 0.2 mm (0.0079 inch) thick 3.5 inch display with a resolution of 320×200 pixels and a 0.3 mm thick 11 inch display with 960×540 pixels resolution. That’s one-tenth the thickness of the XEL-1 (which is also 11 inch and the same resolution).

On October 4, 2008, Sony has published results of research it carried out with the Max Planck Institute over the possibility of mass-market bending displays, which could replace rigid LCDs and plasma screens. Eventually, bendable, transparent OLED screens could be stacked to produce 3D images and their outstanding characteristics means that their contrast ratio and viewing angles are far better than existing products.

In April 2009, Sony demonstrated a 21″ prototype at the Display Japan conference in Tokyo.

In January 2008, Samsung showcased the world’s largest and thinnest OLED TV at the time, at 31-inches and 4.3 mm.

In May 2008, Samsung unveiled an ultra-thin 12.1 inch laptop OLED display concept, with a 1,280 x 768 resolution with infinite contrast ratio.[54] According to Woo Jong Lee, Vice President of the Mobile Display Marketing Team at Samsung SDI, the company expects OLED displays to be used in notebook PCs as soon as 2010.

In October 2008, Samsung showcased the world’s thinnest OLED display, also the first to be ‘flappable’ and bendable. It measures just 0.05 mm (thinner than paper), yet a Samsung staff member said that it is “technically possible to make the panel thinner”.[56] To achieve this thickness, Samsung etched an OLED panel that uses a normal glass substrate. The drive circuit was formed by low-temperature polysilicon TFTs. Also, low-molecular organic EL materials were employed. The pixel count of the display is 480 × 272. The contrast ratio is 100,000:1, and the luminance is 200 cd/m². The colour reproduction range is 100% of the NTSC standard.

In October 2008, Samsung unveiled the world’s largest OLED Television at 40-inch with a Full HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixel. In the FPD International, Samsung stated that its 40-inch OLED Panel is the largest size currently possible. The panel has a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, a colour gamut of 107% NTSC, and a luminance of 200 cd/m² (peak luminance of 600 cd/m²).

In 2007, experimental OLEDs were created which can sustain 400 cd/m² of luminance for over 198,000 hours for green OLEDs and 62,000 hours for blue OLEDs.

Additionally, as the OLED material used to produce blue light degrades more rapidly than other materials that produce other colors, blue light output will decrease relative to the other colors of light. This differential color output change will change the color balance of the display and is much more noticeable than a decrease in overall luminance.[50] This can be partially avoided by adjusting colour balance but this may require advanced control circuits and interaction with the user, which is unacceptable for some uses.

The intrusion of water into displays can damage or destroy the organic materials. Therefore, improved sealing processes are important for practical manufacturing and may limit the longevity of more flexible displays.

OLEDs enable a greater range of colours, gamut, brightness, contrast (both dynamic range and static) and viewing angle than LCDs because OLED pixels directly emit light. OLED pixel colours appear correct and unshifted, even as the viewing angle approaches 90 degrees from normal. LCDs use a backlight and cannot show true black, while an off OLED element produces no light and consumes no power. Energy is also wasted in LCDs because they require polarizers that filter out about half of the light emitted by the backlight. Additionally, colour filters in most colour LCDs filter out two-thirds of the light; technology to separate backlight colours by diffraction has not been widely adopted.[citation needed]

OLEDs also have a faster response time than standard LCD screens. Whereas the fastest LCD displays currently have a 2ms response time, an OLED can have less than 0.01ms response time.

• AM OLED = Active Matrix OLED device

• FOLED = Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (UDC)

• NOID = Neon Organic Iodine Diode (CDT)

• PhOLED = Phosphorescent Organic Light Emitting Diode (UDC)

• PLED = Polymer Light Emitting Diode (CDT)

• PM OLED = Passive Matrix OLED device

• POLED = Patternable organic light-emitting device

• RCOLED = Resonant Colour Organic Light Emitting Diode

• SmOLED = Small Molecule Organic Light Emitting Diode (Kodak)

• SOLED = Stacked Organic Light Emitting Diode (UDC)

• TOLED = Transparent Organic Light Emitting Diode (UDC)

Bottom emission uses a transparent or semi-transparent bottom electrode to get the light through a transparent substrate. Top emission uses a transparent or semi-transparent top electrode to get the light through the counter substrate.

Transparent OLED

Transparent organic light-emitting device (TOLED) uses a proprietary transparent contact to create displays that can be made to be top-only emitting, bottom-only emitting, or both top and bottom emitting (transparent). TOLEDs can greatly improve contrast, making it much easier to view displays in bright sunlight. This technology is used in Head-up displays.

Stacked OLED

Stacked OLED (SOLED) uses a pixel architecture that stacks the red, green, and blue subpixels on top of one another instead of next to one another, leading to substantial increase in gamut and colour depth, and greatly reducing pixel gap. At the moment, all display technologies have the RGB (and RGBW) pixels mapped next to each other.

Inverted OLED

In contrast to a conventional OLED, in which the anode is placed on the substrate, an Inverted OLED (IOLED) uses a bottom cathode that can be connected to the drain end of an n-channel TFT especially for the low cost amorphous silicon TFT backplane useful in the manufacturing of AMOLED displays.