OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 58

Digitimes reports that LG Display is in talks with China's Xiaomi to provide OLED panels for smartphones. The two companies aim to sign a supply agreement by the end of the year as Xiaomi wants to start receiving panels in the second quarter of 2016.

According to Digitimes LGD has been supplying OLEDs to Xiaomi since 2014. This is highly unlikely as Xiaomi has not released any AMOLED product, and LGD is not mass producing small sized AMOLEDs for mobile phones.

LG Display's OLED unit is currently mostly focused on OLED TV production, but the company also has plans to enter the small OLED display market with its flexible plastic-based OLED panels. According to reports, LGD is stepping up its effort to market OLED panels for Chinese phone makers.

LGD currently mostly makes small flexible OLEDs for wearables (such as Apple's Watch and LG's own Watch Urbane 2). LG makes a single handset flexible OLED, the curved 5.5" FHD panel adopted in the company's own G Flex 2 - but this was never really a mass produced device. LGD is also said to be developing a smartphone display that curves around the edges (a-la the GS6 edge)

Samsung announced their financial results for Q3 2015 - the company's operation profit reached $6.46 billion (up from $3.8 billion in Q3 2014, but down from the $9.6 billion record it recorded in Q3 2013). The company reports strong Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ sales (both phones sport 5.7" 2560x1440 Super AMOLED displays, a flexible one on the S6 edge+).

SDC's OLED business experienced improved earnings led by launch of new products and improve productivity. OLED shipments increase by over 30% over Q2 2015 - mostly due to an increase in low-end and mid-end panel shipments and external customer base. Samsung expects the smartphone market to slow down in 2016 and it plans to diversify its product line up and continue to expand its customer base.

The first-generation Apple Watch uses a flexible OLED display, exclusively produced by LG Display. In June 2015 it was rumored that say that Apple signed up Samsung Display to be the second OLED supplier for the next-generation Watch, and today ET News re-iterated the same report.

According to ET News, Apple is also considering ordering AMOLED panels from Samsung for the next-generation iPhone 7. ET News says that Apple will decide on the iPhone 7 display in November - and it it's going to be a flexible OLED display it will have a huge effect on Samsung as the Korean company will have to massively increase its flexible OLED capacity.

Digitimes reports that Samsung Display is seeing increased orders from China for small to medium sized OLED panels - mostly from smartphone makers. According to ETNews, OLED shipments to China will rise to 24 million panels in Q4 2015 up from 4 million panels in Q1.

Several Chinese phone makers adopted AMOLED panels in their latest phones - including Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, ZTE, Gionee, Meizu and others. Digitimes estimates that 30% of smartphones released in 2016 will use AMOLED displays.

Motorola is set to unveil new phones on October 27th, and according to leaked brochures, the Droid Turbo 2 phone will have a "shatterproof" screen - Motorola will even accept trade-ins with phones that have cracked screens - just to emphasize this new feature.

It's not clear what does a shatterproof screen actually means - but it may be that the new phone uses a plastic-based flexible OLED. Up until now all phones that adopt a flexible OLED actually use a cover glass which makes them as shatter prone as any other display... it's not likely but perhaps Motorola uses a new flexible OLED that has no glass at all?

Microsoft just announced several new devices, including three ones with AMOLED displays. So first up with have the Lumia 950 smartphone, which is the company's first Windows 10 mobile phones. It features a 5.2" WQHD (2560x1440) AMOLED display, hexa-core CPU, 32GB of storage, a microSD slot, a 20mp PureView camera (with 4K video support and optical image stabilization) and a USB Type-C port.

Microsoft also launched the Lumia 950 XL, which offers the same hardware with a larger 5.7" display. The Lumia 950 will launch in November 2015 for $549 and the 950 XL will cost $649.

UBI research says that Q2 2015 was a record quarter for the AMOLED market, with 56 million AMOLEDs shipped - an increase of 35% over the previous quarter (41 million panels) and 19% over Q2 2014 (47 million panels).

In terms of revenue, those 56 million panels generated $2.8 billion in revenue. The largest producer is still Samsung of course, and the main reason for the higher volume is the shipment of AMOLEDs to Chinese mobile phone markets. LG Display's flexible AMOLED used in Apple's Watch also contributed to the record quarter.

IHS DisplaySearch says that while the global smartphone display market is contracting, AMOLED shipments are growing. The main reason for that is Samsung Electronics' use of AMOLED displays in low-cost phones, and the adoption of AMOLEDs by several Chinese phone makers.

DisplaySearch estimates that AMOLED sales reached $2.4 billion in Q2 2015, up from $2.3 billion in Q1, $1.7 billion in Q4 2014 and $1.5 billion in Q3 2014.

Yesterday Apple announced their latest smartphone, the iPhone 6s (and its bigger sibling, the 6s plus). Both devices use an IPS LCD display, and also include Force Touch - and of course upgraded hardware.

Before the launch we heard some speculation that the new iPhone will adopt an OLED display - but this was actually quite unlikely, as OLED production it still dominated by Samsung, which means that there is only one supplier (which Apple will not accept for the iPhone) and even Samsung's own capacity will not be enough to satisfy Apple.