OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 41

LG Electronics introduced its V30 smartphone in August 2017, the first LG phone in a long time that uses an OLED display (a 6-inch curved flexible 1440x2280 LGD pOLED). It was assumed that LG will start adopting OLEDs in more of its smartphones going forward, but LG's latest G7 ThinQ uses an LCD and not an OLED.

LG says that it will only use OLED displays in its V series of "innovative" smartphones - the rest of LG's smartphone will continue to use LCDs. It may be that LGD does not simply have the capacity for more OLED smartphone displays - especially if it aims to supply Apple in 2018.

MagnaChip announced that revenues from its OLED driver business increased 141% in Q1 2018 (compared to Q4 2017) - a higher growth than the company expected. Magnachip anticipates that total OLED growth in 2018 will also surpass its previous targets.

Magnachip secured 10 new OLED design wins in Q1 2018 from phone makers in China and elsewhere in Asia. Magnachip also announced that it launched its new 3^rd-generation 40-nm OLED display driver (DDIC) that supports edge-type displays, 21:9 and bezel-less displays and notch-type OLEDs. The new driver has already its first design-in at a leading smartphone maker

IHS says that smartphone makers are expected to increase their adoption of under-the-display fingerprint sensors. In 2018, 9 million such smartphones will be sold, but the market will grow extremely quickly and will reach over 100 million unit in 2019. By 2022, over 300 million such phones will ship.

Under-the-display sensors are currently only applicable to OLED displays. Chinese phones makers (such as Vivo and Huawei) already started shipping the first phones to adopt this technology. IHS estimates that looking forward, the market will be led by Samsung and Chinese smartphone makers such as Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi.

Digitimes posted an interesting article that covers the AMOLED smartphone display driver ICs market, based on information from CINNO Research.

Samsung, according to CINNO, is sourcing driver ICs from two companies - Samsung SLI and MagnaChip. As Samsung's AMOLED market share is over 90%, it means that Samsung SLI and Magnachip are also leading this market. MagnaChip itself expects its OLED revenue to grow 50% in 2018.

In January 2018 it was reported that LG Display is in the final stages of its discussions with Apple, and the Korean OLED maker expects to supply 15-16 million flexible OLEDs to Apple in 2018 (LGD will supply Apple with 6.5" AMOLEDs for its 2018 large iPhone OLED variant).

The Wall Street Journal now reports that LG Display may not be ready to produce these OLED displays in time for Apple - who may once again rely on Samsung Display to produce all of its OLED iPhone displays in 2018.

IHS Markit announced that it is lowering its smartphone AMOLED market forecasts, following lower-than-expected iPhone X sales (mainly because of its high price). IHS says that OLED makers will need to lower production costs of both rigid and flexible AMOLED panels in order to compete with lower priced high-end LCDs.

IHS expected flexible OLED shipments to reach 167 million panels in 2018 - up 34% compared to 2017, but a much lower amount then the company's previous estimates. Total (rigid + flexible) OLED shipments in 2018 will grow 14% to 453 million.

While it's still not clear whether Apple plans to release two new OLED iPhone models in 2018 or just a single one, a new report from Bloomberg suggests that Apple is working on a new design that will use a curved OLED display in its future phones.

According to the report, the display will "curve inward gradually from top to bottom" - so this design will be different then Samsung's popular edge-type phones, maybe something similar to LG's old Flex phones. Bloomberg also says that this technology is "2-3 years away" which is a bit surprising - by then Apple is expected to adopt foldable displays.

Apple's iPhone X sales were lower than expected, which resulted in a reduction of OLED display orders from SDC (from an estimated 40 million in Q1 2018 to 20 million). Several reports also suggested that Apple may decide to only introduce one new OLED iPhone model in 2018 (the larger 6.5" one, with panels made by LGD).

One of these reports came from Taiwan's Digitimes, but a new report from Digitimes suggests that Apple does plan to upgrade its OLED iPhone X in 2018. According to Digitimes, Apple will introduce a slightly larger 5.9" OLED model. In total Apple will buy 110-130 OLED panels in 2018, for all three OLED models (the 2017 iPhone X, the 2018 5.9" iPhone XI and the larger 6.5" OLED iPhone XI plus).

Yesterday reports from Korea suggested that pre-orders for the Galaxy S9 in Korea are 30% lower compared to the pre-orders of the Galaxy S8 in 2017. The Korea Herald, however, today says that Samsung believes it will sell more Galaxy S9 phones than it did with the GS8.

The Korea Herald says that Samsung told its suppliers that its target is to sell 43 million GS9 (and GS9 plus) phones in 2018. In 2017, Samsung shipped 41 million GS8 and GS8 plus phones. In 2016, Samsung shipped 48 million GS7 phones, so even if it reaches its target of 43 million GS9 phones, it will still lag behind The GS7.

According to reports from Korea, pre-orders for the Galaxy S9 in Korea are 30% lower compared to the pre-orders of Samsung's Galaxy S8 in 2017. Yonhap news says that Korea's three largest carriers distributed only 180,000 GS9 phones, while at the same time last year these three companies distributed 260,00 GS8 phones.

Samsung did not yet disclose any pre-sales data. The GS9 has a flexible 5.8" 1440x2960 (570 PPI) Super AMOLED display (6.2", 529 PPI, on the S9 Plus). DisplayMate says that this display is the best mobile display ever tested, surprassing in quality the 5.8" flexible AMOLED used in the iPhone X.