OLED TV: Introduction and Industry News - Page 31

According to Business Korea, the demand for OLED TVs is increasing, which is helping OLED TV vendors, mainly LG, Sony and Panasonic to increase sales in the premium TV segment.

BK says that in 2018, LG Electronics sold 62.2% of all OLED TVs, followed by Sony (18.9%) and Panasonic (7.7%). Other OLED TV vendors include AOC/Tp-Vision/Philips (5.7%) and Skyworth (2.4%).

Panasonic has been showing transparent OLED display prototypes and concepts since 2016 (with the latest one shown last year in Shanghai) and today the Japanese TV maker has demonstrated a new transparent concept OLED display.

The new display, designed by Scandinavian based designer Daniel Rybakken in collaboration with Panasonic Design Kyoto uses a transparent OLED panel housed in a wooden cabinet that looks like a regular glass cabinet.

DSCC says that OLED market revenues will grow from $26.5 billion in 2018 to $28.7 billion in 2019 and over $52 billion by 2023. The largest application will remain smartphone displays, but several other applications will generate over $1 billion in 2023 - TVs, tablets, notebooks and monitors. By area of production, TV displays will surpass smartphone displays in 2021.

Samsung is still (and will remain so) the dominant AMOLED display producer, even though its market share will drop from 97% in Q1 2018 to 81% in Q4 2019. In Q1 2019 Visionox surpassed LGD to become the 2nd largest AMOLED producer (but most of Visionox's panels are low-end 5.5-inch panels). DSCC expects LGD to regain its number 2 position in the second half of 2019. BOE is the third player and will remain so following its supply agreement with Huawei.

B&H photo is now listing Sony's 2019 range of OLED TVs. There's no shipping date yet, but there are prices for all of Sony's 2019 OLEDs. The mid-range A8G will cost $1,999 for the 55" model and $2,999 for the 65" model. The high-end consumer reference-quality A9G will cost $2,799 for the 55" model, $3,799 for the 65" model and $7,999 for the 77" model.

Sony' A8G features Sony's X1 Extreme processor, Android TV, Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio (the entire screen is the speaker), 4K upscaling (X-Reality PRO) and Motionflow XR for smooth fast action. The A9G adds Sony's Pixel Contrast Booster and an automated calibration mode (including a dedicated mode for Netflix).

Last week LG announced the pricing and availability of its 2019 OLED TVs, and today Amazon started to offer LG's new OLED C9 in the US. The TVs will actually ship in "3 to 5 weeks", i.e. some time in April.The C9 (which will be available in 55", 65" and 77" sizes) is based on LG's 2nd-gen Alpha 9 intelligent processor which enables LG's ThinQ AI to offer new display algorithms and Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. The TVs feature HDMI 2.1 which enables high frame rate (HFR) support, enhanced audio return channel (eARC), variable refresh rate (VRR) and automatic low latency mode (ALLM).

On March 9th, LG Display's promotion team kindly invited us to a tour of LG's "Display City" in Paju, Korea. The display complex houses about 20,000 employees, and is highly impressive. It was a pleasure to get the opportunity to see it.

The first thing one notices is the new P10 10.5-Gen OLED TV fab building - which is the largest building in Paju. The P10 OLED TV fab is not complete yet, but according to reports LGD will be ready to start installing the equipment soon.

LG announced its 2019 OLED TV range in January 2019, and now the company announced the pricing and availability of its upcoming TVs for all models - except the rollable OLED TV R and the 88" 8K OLED Z9.The "entry-level" OLED C9 will cost $2,499 for the 55" model (will be available in April), $3,499 for the 65" model (April) and $6,999 for the 77" model (May) . The OLED E9 TVs will cost $3,299 for the 55" model (June) and $4,299 for the 65" model (April).

In January 2018 LG Display unveiled its largest OLED TV panel yet - a 88" 8K (7680x4320) display. In early 2019 LG Electronics announced that it will adopt this panel in its upcoming OLED Z9 88" OLED TV. Yesterday in Shanghai at the Appliance & Electronics World Expo 2019 (AWE2019) Skyworth demonstrates its own 88" 8K OLED TV.

We do not have any details on this TV, and whether it is just a prototype or a product that Skyworth aims to launch soon. In any case it turns out that Skyworth already demonstrated this TV at CES 2019, but we failed to report on that. In addition to the large OLED, Skyworth also demonstrated a new OLED TV design which they call waterfall OLED - look at the image below to understand why. It is not clear but it is likely that this is a prototype rollable OLED TV.

In early March we conducted a 10 day trip to Seoul, to attend the OLED Korea 2019 conference (and visit some local display companies).

Visiting Seoul is a great chance to witness some beautiful OLED installations - LG Display has been deploying its OLED lighting and display solutions across town in businesses and tourist attractions. Retail stores of course were showing the latest smartphones by Samsung and LG - all of which adopt high end flexible AMOLED displays.

According to Business Korea, LG Display is likely to start investing in its P10 10.5-Gen OLED TV fab in Paju by the end of the month (Q1 2019). Total investment in the P10 production fab is estimated to reach almost $10 billion.

LGD was supposed to start ordering equipment for the P10 line towards the end of 2018, but the company delayed these plans - according to an earlier BK report, LGD delayed the P10 fab in late 2018 as it found the shift to new 10.5-Gen substrates more challenging than it earlier expected, and in addition it wanted to focus on its upcoming 8.5-Gen line in Guangzhou first. Apparently LGD is now ready to start building the P10 line.