OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 43

According to Business Korea, LG Display signed an agreement with Sony to supply it with flexible pOLED displays for future Sony smartphones. Sony is not a major smartphone player globally, but in Japan it holds 14.9% of the market (second only to Apple).

LG Display is already supplying Sony with OLED displays for Sony's OLED TVs, and reportedly in 2017 Sony requested LGD to double its OLED panel shipments as demand for Sony's OLED TVs has been better than expected.

In a somewhat confusing article, ETNews claims that Samsung Display's utilization rate at its A3 flexible OLED line has fallen more than 10% compared to 2017 as the company sees decreased shipments to Apple. This is yet another sign that Apple is seeing lower iPhone X sales than initially expected.

ETNews says that Q1 is always a seasonally low quarter, but this year's utilization rate is lower than what Samsung experienced in Q1 2017. ETNews says that Apple's share of the A3 capacity was about 77%, with the rest of the production going for Samsung Electronics and Chinese phone makers.

In November 2017 KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo estimated that Apple will launch three new iPhone models in 2018 - two of these will sport OLED displays, the 5.8" and 6.5" models. A new report from Digitimes, however, says that Apple may eventually only launch the larger (6.5-inch) OLED variant in 2018.

According to Digitimes, Apple is developing four new iPhones: two LCD Models (5.8" and 6") and two OLED Models (6" and 6.5"), but it may abandon the smaller OLED variant. This is mostly due to lower than expected iPhone X sales.

BOE started to produce flexible OLED displays at its first flexible AMOLED line, the Chengdu B7 6-Gen fab, in October 2017. Financial analysts from CLSA say that according to their checks, the ramp-up at the B7 is ahead of schedule, and CLSA expects BOE to ship 19 million smartphone OLEDs in 2018 and 41 million panels in 2019.

CLSA says that major Chinese smartphone makers will launch the first smartphones that use BOE's flexible OLEDs in February and March or 2018. CLSA says it won't be surprised to hear BOE announcing new OLED fab plans soon (in H1 2018).

Google's Pixel 2 XL (which started shipping in October 2017) is one of the first two phones to adopt LG Display's new 6" 1440x2880 (538 PPI) pOLEDs (alongside with LG's own V30). While on paper these displays are superb, actual reviews were rather dismal - as both reviewers and customers complained about bad color reproduction, graininess and problematic viewing angles. In addition many users seem to report serious image retention issues.

According to reports in 2017, LGD faced very low yields at its 6-Gen E5 line, and so had to produce these smartphone displays at its Gen-4.5 flexible AMOLED line. Some users are now saying that these issues do not plague all of Google's phone - and some come with noticeable better displays. This should be good news for LGD and it's likely that as the company gains more experience with smartphone pOLED production, it will produce better looking displays in better yields.

Last week we posted on reports from Japan that claims that Sharp aims to begin commercial production of flexible OLED displays for its own smartphones in the spring. Sharp's CEO today confirmed these reports, saying that Sharp will commence production in Q1 2018 and will introduce its new OLED smartphones in June or July of 2018.

In October 2016 Sharp announced that it will invest $570 million and build OLED pilot lines at its plants in Osaka and in the Mie Prefecture, with plans to begin (pilot) production in the summer of 2018. If Sharp will indeed begin production by the end of March, it is quite ahead of schedule - although of course it remain to be seen whether they will be able to reach satisfactory yields before the summer.

According to Digitimes Research, due to the high prices and low availability of OLED displays, China-based smartphone makers (including Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi) are planning to adopt mini LED backlit LCD panels in future smartphones as an alternative to OLED displays.

DR reports that Chinese phone makers have reached out to Taiwan-based LED makers to start making mini-LED backlighting units by June 2018. While it is true that the OLED market is currently in an over-demand situation, OLED capacity is set to increase sharply in the near future, and IHS estimates that the market will actually enter an over-supply situation in 2018.

In December 2017 Synaptics unveiled a new under-the-OLED fingerprint sensor called Clear ID. Following a year-long collaboration with Synaptics, Chinese phone maker Vivo has unveiled the first device to use such a solution.

Vivo's smartphone (which does not have a model yet) has a 6" AMOLED display, and it will be released in Asia in Q2 2018. According to the report at Android Authority, the solution is very nice and works quite well, although it is slower than currently available sensors, as it takes 0.7 seconds to unlock the phone (Synaptics says that this is actually on par with regular sensors).

In October 2016 Sharp announced that it will invest $570 million and build OLED pilot lines at its plants in Osaka and in the Mie Prefecture, with plans to begin (pilot) production in the summer of 2018. According to a new report from Japan, Sharp aims to begin commercial production of flexible OLED displays for its own smartphones in the spring.

According to the new report, Sharp already started to produce sample flexible OLEDs at its Osaka fab. The displays are still not ready for production, though. And in any case these will be very low volume production lines.

Samsung has been developing foldable display technologies for a long time, and it seems that a foldable phone/tablet is always just around the corner. In September 2017 Samsung's Mobile Business group President says that it hopes to have a foldable phone in the market in 2018, and according to new reports from Korea Samsung is now expected to start production in November 2018. The phone will have a 7.3-inch display that folds inside.

2014 foldable phone concept

The Korea Herald reports that the foldable phone will be introduced in December 2018 or early next year. Samsung Electronics already finished the phone's design and specification, and Samsung Display is expected to complete the display development by March 2018. The actual panel production will commence in September 2018.