OLED TV: Introduction and Industry News - Page 28

HDTVTest, together with Crampton & Moore, organized the 2019 TV shootout, to find out what's the best TV of 2019. The test included four 65-inch TVs - LG OLED65C9, Panasonic 65GZ2000, Samsung 65Q90R, and Sony's 65A9G. The reference display was Sony's BVM-X300 OLED mastering monitor.

The audience (38 AV enthusiasts) chose LG's OLEDC9 as the best TV of 2019, followed by Panasonic's GZ2000. OLED TVs were the best in all categories, except the bright-room performance, for which Samsung won first place with its high brightness.

In February 2019 LG Display started producing its 55" FHD transparent commercial OLED displays, and now the company says it plans to double its transparent OLED production in Q4 2019 - and continue to ramp up production years to come. LGD sees possible applications in shop windows, building façades and exhibition spaces.

LG Display is also working with partners such as Planar - who recently announced its 2nd-Gen LookThru (LO552) OLED displays.

According to a report from Korea, LG Display is discussing the sale of open-cell OLED panels with TV makers, including China-based Skyworth. The Korean's Elec suggests that LG Display will start offering open-cell OLEDs from its Guangzhou fab which is expected to start producing OLED TV panels by the end of the month.

An open-cell panel can lower the costs for TV makers as each can decide on the assembly process and driver ICs. It could also lead to more innovation and differentiation. Many LCD TV panels are sold in that fashion - but for LG's OLED this will be the first time.

LG Display announced its unaudited financial results for Q2 2019, and updated on its upcoming OLED projects.

First of all, LGD announced an additional investment of KRW 3 trillion ($2.5 billion) P10 10.5-Gen OLED TV fab in Paju. Last month it was reported that LG display has started to install some of the Oxide-TFT deposition equipment (supplied by Applied Materials and Jusung Engineering). The mass production at the first lines in the P10 fab is expected to begin in 2021. LG Display did not disclose any more details regarding this new $2.5 billion investment plan yet.

LG Electronics installed a beautiful flexible curved OLED signage installation at Korea's Incheon Airport.:

LG has a long history of OLED installations at Incheon airport. In November 2015 LG installed a huge 13x8 meter OLED signage display made from 140 55" 4K OLED TV (a total of 290 million pixels). That was the world's largest OLED display at the time.

PlayNitride demonstrated its latest Micro-LED displays at SID DisplayWeek 2019 - a 7.56" 720x480 (114 PPI) transparent MicroLED, a flexible Micro-LED on a polyimide substrate and a high-brightness, high-resolution passive matrix MicroLED aimed towards wearable applications.

PlayNitride aims to release its first Micro-LED display products by the end of 2019. In 2017 the company started to sample micro-LED panels and shipped samples to 10-20 potential customers.

In January 2019 China-based Hisense announced its dual-LCD ULED XD panel, that includes an monochrome inner LCD panel that acts as a two million dimming zones layer to boost the contrast.

In a trade show in China, HiSense demonstrated this panel again, and is apparently close to launching it as a product. The model number will be U9E and Hisense plans to sell it for CNY 17,999 (around $2600) for the 65" 4K model.

In April 2019 Panasonic unveiled a transparent OLED TV prototype housed in a wooden cabinet. Here's a nice video showing the display in action:

Panasonic has been showing transparent OLED display prototypes and concepts since 2016. This specific prototype was designed by Scandinavian based designer Daniel Rybakken in collaboration with Panasonic Design Kyoto.

China-based All View Cloud consultancy says that OLED TV sales in China will reach 380,000 units in 2019, (up from 210,000 in 2018 and 120,000 in 2017) and will rise to 800,000 units in 2020. By 2021 or 2021 the sales will surpass 2 million units - which will make China the world's largest market for OLED TVs.

According to AVC, Skyworth is leading the Chinese OLED TV market with 46% of total OLED sales in 2017, followed by LG (16%) and Sony (14.9%). The penetration of OLED TVs in China is relatively low, compared to the US, Europe and Japan and there's much room for growth.

In July 2017, LG Display announced its plans to build a 8.5-Gen (2200x2500) OLED TV production line in Guangzhou, China. Following many delays, LGD got the approval for its new OLED TV fab from both the Korean and Chinese governments in July 2018 and started constructing the fab, with an investment of about $4.2 billion.

Today LG Display announced that the Guangzhou fab will start production in August 2019. The fab will begin with test runs in July but it seems that LGD is confident that mass production will begin next month. The initial capacity of this new fab will be 60,000 monthly substrates, which will bring LGD's total OLED TV capacity to 130,000 monthly 8.5-Gen substrates (i.e. will almost double its current capacity).