OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 57

Reports that Apple has decided to adopt OLEDs in the 2018 iPhone models has been around for a while, and most of them concluded the Apple will sign OLED supply agreements with both Samsung and LG. A new report from Taiwan suggests that Apple plans to invest in AU Optronics, and help it become a leading OLED producer.

AUO declined to comment on those rumors, but shares in the company jumped over 5% in Taiwan's stock exchange.

The OLED Association posted an interesting article, summarizing 2015 and giving its projection for 2016 and onwards. So first of all, they conclude that 2015 was a great year for the OLED display industry, with shipments up 53% over 2014 to reach almost 275 million units. AMOLED Revenues grew to almost $13 billion - up 40% over 2014.

The growth was mostly due to Samsung Display's effort to commercialize flexible OLED displays for mobile phones and the expansion of AMOLED customer beyond Samsung Electronics. LG Display also contributed to the OLED display market, and the OLED association estimates the LG sold over 400,000 OLED TVs. They also say that they shipped around 14,000 flexible OLEDs, but they probably mean around 14 million - as that about makes sense for the Apple Watch.

Visionox announced that it started to mass produce 1.45" AMOLED displays for wearable applications. The 1.45" panel features a resolution of 272x340 (300 PPI) and is less than one mm thick with a 1.5 mm frame. The display offers both MIPI and SPI interfaces.

Visionox also announced that the first product to use this display will be a smartwatch that will be on sale in China in February 2016. Visionox further revealed that they achieved the first AMOLED design win for a mobile phone, and the first phone that uses their 5.5" AMOLED panel announced in June will ship globally in March 2016.

A couple of weeks ago, IHS said that 79 million AMOLED displays shipped in Q3 2015 - a new record high. Today IHS released the following chart showing AMOLED (and other screen types) mobile phone shipments in 2015:

IHS says that 2015 will be a "banner year" for AMOLED as more and more display makers are adopting the new screen type in their high-end smartphones. In fact, IHS says that "The simpler structure and better picture performance of AMOLED screens may even encourage Apple to consider adopting the technology in the future".

According to reports from Korea, Samsung expects smartphone sales to fall by around 12% in 2016 compared to 2015. Global smartphone sales growth is slowing (to around 10% annually) and Samsung is seeing competition from Chinese brands that produce high-end phones at lower prices.

The reports suggest that Samsung will focus on budget handsets next year - as demand for the mid-range A series and low-end J series has been better than expected. The company is also planning to announce the new flagship GS7 soon - maybe during the MWC conference in February (I hope they do as we plan to attend this conference).

The OLED-Info team is excited to announce its attendance at the at the MWC 2016, the world's largest event for the mobile industry held in Barcelona, Spain. The MWC event is always exciting, and we hope to see many new OLED devices and prototypes on display.

If you want to schedule a meeting during the event, contact us here. We hope to come back with several interesting OLED stories, so stay tuned. This year the event will feature an entire pavilion dedicated to graphene in regards to the mobile world. Graphene has a potential to revolutionize many industries - be sure to check out our sister site graphene-info to stay updated on everything graphene.

According to IHS, 79 million AMOLED displays shipped in Q3 2015 - which is a new record high. The revenues from those OLEDs reached $3.29 billion - also a record high. Q3 2015 shipments doubled that of Q3 2014, and rose 35% over Q2 2015. Most of these displays were, of course, produced by Samsung Display and ended up in smartphones.

IHS says that the AMOLED displays accounts for 18% of the total mobile phone display market.

Samsung launched three new smartphones today - new 2016 editions of the Galaxy A7, Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A3. All three new phones sport Super AMOLED and will launch in a couple of weeks in China (and globally later on).

So first up we have the The Galaxy A7 (2016 edition) - a large smartphone with a 5.5" Full-HD Super AMOLED display. The A7 uses an octa-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, microSD slot, 13 MP camera, fingerprint reader and a metal and glass body.

In the past few weeks I have read dozens of stories regarding Apple and their display choice for future iPhones. Some reports say that they aim to adopt OLEDs in their future iPhones starting in 2017, some say Apple decided to remain with LCDs... One thing for sure - the 2016 iPhones will use an LCD and not an OLED.

One of the major reasons for that is that Apple sells around 200 million iPhones in a year - and there's simply not enough OLED production capacity for that. New reports from Japan say that Apple does want to switch to OLEDs - and is in talks with suppliers to secure the capacity and increase the lifetime and performance of OLEDs.

Samsung Display published a new video, explaining why AMOLED is the best display for mobile phones. I have some misgivings about this video, but it's still nice to see Samsung trying to "end the confusion regarding mobile displays" as they say in the video:

Samsung explains that AMOLED has four important features that make it the best display for mobile devices: excellent photo quality, rich color reproduction, slim design and low energy consumption.