OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 44

Korea's Cetizen posted an interesting review of the burn-in of 3 flagship OLED phones, the iPhone X, the S7 Edge and the Note 8. Cetizen displayed the same image on all three phones for 510 hours (!) at full brightness.

As you can see in the image above, the Note 8 has very visible burn-in, while the two other phones perform better. Cetizen say that the iPhone has the best display in that regard. Apple did in fact confirm that the iPhone X suffers from burn in, but also said that it engineered the display to be the best in the industry in reducing the effect of OLED burn-in, though - and apparently this engineering works.

The Korea Herald claims 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. According to the report, LG will supply Apple with 6.5" AMOLEDs for its 2018 large iPhone OLED variant.

Samsung Display will remain Apple's main OLED supplier, and this new report says that SDC will supply apple with more than 120 million 5.8" OLEDs in 2018. An earlier report by Business Korea estimated that SDC will supply Apple with 180-200 OLEDs in 2018.

Display analyst firm DSCC released a new market report on the OLED market, in which they have some very interesting estimates on the OLED market. OLED revenues reached over $5 billion for the first time in Q3 2017, and DSCC sees a huge 88% jump in the final quarter of 2017 (to $10 billion) as Samsung starts to supply flexible OLEDs to Apple.

Flexible OLED revenues are the main driver of the growth in OLED smartphone shipments, with revenues rising 37% in Q3 2017 and are expected to grow 140% (Q/Q) in Q4 2017. Flexible OLED unit share out of the entire OLED smartphone market reached 33% in Q3 and will reach 49% in Q4. In terms of revenues, the market share will grow from 66% in Q3 to 80% in Q4.

According to Business Korea, Samsung Display will ship 50 million flexible AMOLED displays to Apple in 2017. Next year that amount is set to quadruple to 180-200 million panels, as Apple aims to adopt OLED displays in more iPhone models.

Samsung will produce all of these OLEDs bound for Apple at its A3 fab. Initially SDC aimed to construct a new fab for Apple (the A5 fab) but earlier reports suggested that these plans have been delayed. Samsung managed to increase the yields at its A3 line from 60% in early 2017 to around 90% today.

Apple is currently relying on Samsung Display as its exclusive supplier of smartphone OLED displays (SDC produces the 5.8" flexible Super AMOLED display on its flagship iPhone X), and Apple is obviously not content with this situation.

Finding a second supplier is not easy as SDC is the only company that can produce quality flexible OLEDs at the quantities that Apple requires. Reports suggested that Apple is in talks with LGD (also with other companies, such BOE Display) and in its recent filing, LG Display hinted that it is indeed talking to Apple.

DSCC estimates that 88 Million smartphone OLED displays were shipped in Q3 2017, which represents a 4% drop from Q2 2017 and a 13% drop from Q3 2016 - mostly due to delays in iPhone X shipments. Flexible OLED shipments were up 25% from Q2 2017 (30.4 million units).

Shipments are expected to grow significantly in Q4 2017, though, to reach 151 million units. Flexible OLEDs shipments (78.3 million) will grow 157% from last quarter and 544% from last year, and will surpass rigid OLED shipments (73.3 million) for the first time.

IHS says that SDC increased its lead in the smartphone display market, reaching a market share of 42.7% in Q3 2017. Samsung is followed by JDI (12.5%), LG Display (10.1%), BOE (8.8%) and Sharp (7.7%). The smartphone display market totaled $11.8 billion in Q3, a new quarterly high.

IHS says that OLED smartphone revenue reached a record high in the quarter - $5.11 billion (up 32.4% from the $3.86 billion in Q2 2017). SDC's market share in the OLED smartphone display market is 98.5% ($5.03 billion). IHS actually expects SDC's market share to increase slightly to 98.8% in Q4 2017.

China-based Sigmaintell estimates that the smartphone display shipments were about 530 million units in Q3 2017, with SDC ranking as the top vendor (with 106 million panels). LG display shipments were down 28% (to 33 million units).

Sigmaintell estimates that LG Display shipped 1.2 million smartphone AMOLED panels. LGD is currently shipping a single smartphone AMOLED panel, a 6" 1440x2880 (537 PPI) one used in LG's own V30 and Google's Pixel 2 XL. Reviewers and consumers alike were disappointed in LG's AMOLED performance.

Visionox participated at the 19th China International Hi-Tech Fair opened in Shenzhen, and the company demonstrated several new OLED prototype panels. Visionox demonstrate several "full-screen" AMOLEDs, including a 6.01" one and a 5.99" flexible one.

According to the Chinese report, Visionox has stated its flexible OLED "roadmap" as the company wants to start with curved panels, then move to foldable and finally to stretchable displays. Visionox says it has achieved mass production technology for curved OLEDs, but according to our information its first flexible AMOLED fab will only begin production in the summer of 2018.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo estimates that Apple will launch three new iPhone models in 2018. Two of these will sport OLED displays, the 5.8" and 6.5" models. According to Kuo, all of Apple's iPhones in 2018 will have the same full-screen notched design used in the iPhone X.

Note that the image above, produced by KGI, is just a render. Kuo sees the 5.8" iPhone (X2?) using the same resolution as the iPhone X (1125x2436, 458 PPI). The 6.5" model will actually sport a higher density (480 to 500 PPI).