Exhibited at the UK's Plastic Electronics Strategy event (and doesn't that sound like a hoot!), PolyPhotonix used it to advertise its polymer-based OLED lighting panels. [OLED-info via UberGizmo]

It's been so long since Kodak's been relevant that it's easy to forget how much they've pioneered. Today, though, they've been reduced to a case study in what happens when companies built on increasingly obsolete technology are slow to evolve. Kodak's OLED business is good example of what's gone wrong: they've made some nice (though questionably necessary) advances with it, but don't have any TV or monitor presence with which to leverage it. So now they've handed it off to LG, who'll save fistloads of cash by having access to Kodak's "fundamental" OLED intellectual property portfolio, while Kodak will use whatever money they got out of the sale to buy down some debt and make some perfectly adequate printers.

To keep the metaphors coming: Kodak hasn't so much passed the torch as they have sold the farm. [BusinessWire via Endgadget]

DigiTimes says that the 9.7-inch OLED panels are priced at about $500 bucks today, and the screen would account for about 30 percent of the device's $1500 to $1700 cost when it arrives in the second quarter of next year. OLED prices are expected to fall over the next couple of years, though. As for the 10.6-incher, that's still said to be in the $800 to $1000 ballpark.

No word yet from them on the rumored matter synthesizer and teleporter module, but give it a couple more months, and they will spill it all out. [DigiTimes]

Those 40-inch panels will still be "fairly expensive", but LG says new manufacturing processes will drive down costs by 2016.

LG Display aims to achieve a 50% higher material cost and a 30% lower yield than those of LCD panels in 2012 and a 20-30% lower material cost and an equivalent yield in 2016.

That's a pretty big call, but I like where their head's at. [Nikkei via OLED-Display.net]

No word on when it'll become a real product, but it's bound to be pricey. A reminder, too, that of all the 3D TV systems we've tried so far, Panasonic's active shutter-glasses and 103-inch 3D Plasma concept produced less flickering than Sony's active shutters, and was more watchable than JVC's 3D system that uses passive polarizing glasses. Oh, and here's what Panasonic's final glasses design looks like. Yep, until we see 3D TVs that don't need glasses, we're all gonna look like dorks. At least it'll be in the comfort of our own lounge rooms. [Samsung Korea]

We don't know much more at this point, but it's just one of many concepts Samsung has on show at the FPD exhibition in Japan. Follow the link to check them out, including a netbook with 7-inch AMOLED screen. [Akihabara News]

Akihabara News' video below also shows LG's 47-inch LED backlit TV concept, and a mulit-touch notebook display. No real information is given, but it looks like they're all AMOLED-based. [Akihabara News]

The OLED lamp even senses when it's light or dark out, and if it's light, stores the energy produced by rocking in a battery pack until nightfall. The chair, designed by Rochus Jacob, rightfully shared first prize at the DesignBoom Green Life Competition, which you can read more about here. [Unpluggd]

That's definitely the biggest OLED screen I've heard of. Of course, the individual panels are a bit of a cheat—and mean you only see a red, green and blue matrix until you're at least 2 feet away—but Mitsubishi imagines the tech being curved around buildings, trains and buses in Japan.

OLED screens are capable of much higher resolutions than regular stadium-style LED displays, but have two fatal flaws. They're super expensive, and OLED degrades. The expected life of an OLED panel is only about 20,000 hours (roughly 2.5 years for a 24/7 advertisement). Gorgeous as they are, that expense is why you're not reading this on an OLED screen right now. [OLED-Display.Net and Network World]

Here, the touch controls are 100% intact; the problem is that the bottom majority of the screen is completely washed out in a bright, white filter.

Study the clip at 28 seconds in. You'll see that the display is working fine before the white mask flashes back in. While OLED engineers in the audience can feel free to correct us, we think there's a strong possibility that the problem is software-based (and thereby firmware-fixable through a patch). But obviously, make Microsoft give you a new Zune right away if you're encountering such an issue.

Essentially, electrons pass through the pickle (or any other active organic matter) and charge the substance. When positive and negative charges collide, they release a photon (light). This pickle represents just one of millions of OLEDs in a potential display. It also means that Vlassic stock will skyrocket if they can only cut those Bread and Butter chips a little bit smaller. [MIT TechTV via PopSci]

After introducing its X Series laptops yesterday the company told reporters that it would release an OLED notebook towards the end of 2010, perhaps in the third quarter. Lenovo has also mentioned plans to use OLED and Sony has shown a totally futuristic notebook based on OLED panels, but this is the first solid timing we have heard of.

Not surprising there was no mention of cost, but we've got to assume that it would add a couple of hundred to the price of a regular notebook (OLED screens are about 50 to 80 percent more expensive than regular LCDs). But with analysts at Gartner believing that OLED laptops will become the norm over the next 5 years maybe it won't be as bad as anticipated. I'll start saving. [TechRadar]

The design is both clever and functional, with the display's ports tucked behind the monitor in some sort of cross between a folded piece of paper and a photo frame. In turn, the necessarily hardware becomes its own stand, and the display can tilt, too (not that the viewing angle on most OLEDs is necessarily lacking).

LG's premium OLED will be released in Korea this November. And don't be surprised if/when you see a $2000+ pricetag on the thing. [Flickr via OLED Info and Engadget]

Long story short, the display turned on just fine and displayed a—wait for it—fish image.

While a bit quirky, the achievement is noteworthy simply because OLED displays, like some cats, despise water. But this one didn't!

So now flexible OLED displays work under water, or at the very least in tiny cups surrounding by Playmobil people. [Plugged In via OLED Display]

The 15-incher will officially debut at the IFA 2009 show in Berlin, LG execs told Reuters, after which it will sell first in Korea before making its way overseas sometime after November.

And better still, at least for OLED fans, is word that LG is also preparing a 40-inch OLED product in the "not so distant future." We probably don't have to tell you that this "product" will undoubtedly be "expensive." [Reuters]

Things, with dollars! It's a story, in two parts: enjoy.

From March, here:

[M]anufacturers are being faced with two equally unattractive (read: expensive) options for building TV-sized OLED TVs, like the one Samsung showed off last year: either devise an entirely new manufacturing process, which would require the invention of new techniques and machines for fabrication, or pursue a different type of OLED panel. Both options would circumvent the current size restrictions, but both options are extremely expensive.

The investments necessary to manufacters a legitimately "next-gen," i.e. either reasonably priced or reasonably sized, OLED, are extremely high, and difficult to muster capital for in this economy. This alone could've explained Sony's delay, but then we have this, today, from the WSJ:

Sony will delay the launch of its next organic light emitting diode, or OLED, television because mass producing the new displays would exacerbate losses at its TV division, according to people familiar with the matter.

It's not just that developing the fabrication processes to build larger OLED TVs is too expensive—it's that so far, and probably for some time into the future, OLED TVs are and will be money-losing prestige products. And right now, Sony can't afford prestige products.

The WSJ points to Samsung and LG as the companies to fill the OLED void, but neither company has been overly enthusiastic about the technology, at least on a TV scale, for the last few months. Idealistic vision of the future, circa 2007? Deeeeee—layed. [WSJ]

In layman's terms, the innovation arrives thanks to a liquid semiconducting layer that potentially bends and flexes more reliably than the "vacuum thermal evaporation" technique employed by Samsung.

In the researchers' case, the liquid, officially known as ethylhexyl carbazole (EHCz), will constantly deliver a fresh supply of semiconductors to the emitting layer. To you and me that means better, more flexible screens that might not degrade as quickly as once thought, if and when they arrive in the (near?) future. Just don't try and drink one. [PhysOrg via OLED Info - Thanks, Ron]