OLED TV: Introduction and Industry News - Page 33

DSCC says that production costs for a 55" QD-OLED TV panel at Samsung Display's 8.5-Gen fab will reach almost $800 in 2019. While this will fall to around $450 in 2022, Samsung will still lose money on every panel sold if DSCC has its price and cost estimates right.

It is important to note that most of the cost is depreciation costs - which means that in terms of cash on each panel, SDC's margins will actually be around 40%. Part of the reason for he high cost of required equipment is the need to use 12 TFT masks.. SDC is apparently looking to reduce the mask number which will lower production costs.

Samsung Electronics reported its financial results for Q4 2018, with revenues of KRW 59.27 trillion ($53 billion USD), down 10% from Q4 2017. Samsung's operating profit of KRW 10.8 trillion ($9.6 billion) was down 29% from 2017.

Samsung Display reported a decline in rigid smartphone OLED display sales - due to rising competition from LCD panels. Demand for flexible OLEDs was strong. In Q1 2019, OLED display sales will remain weak - but Samsung says that flexible OLED demand will pickup in the second half of 2019.

LG Display reported its financial results for Q4 2018 - it reported an operating profit of ₩279 billion ($250 million USD) due to strong shipments of IT panels and OLED TVs. LGD however gave a weak outlook to 2019 (for its LCD business).

LGD says that it will invest $7.1 billion in 2019 in capacity expansion, and $3.5 billion in 2020. It will divert all of its investments into OLED displays - with 60% going to large area OLED TV production and 40% going to small/medium pOLED production.

LG Display had an impressive booth at CES 2019, show off the company's latest display technologies - and most of these were OLED displays, of course. LGD sent us this nice video that shows the main displays at their booth:

The video shows LG's flower OLED installation made up from four curved 65" OLED TV panels, the 88" Crystal-Sound-OLED (CSO) panel with the built-in speaker, LG's new 65" Crystal-Motion OLED (which features an MPTR of 3.5 ms - the world's fastest according to LGD) and finally LG's latest 55" transparent OLED panels.

China-based Hisense announced a new technology that the company says will enable its LCDs to compete with OLEDs in high contrast. The so-called ULED XD panels use two LCDs panels, one on top of the other. The inner LCD is a monochrome (greyscale) FHD LCD that is used to block the light on low brightness images, and on top of it is the usual 4K full-color LCD.

This is basically a way to achieve a high number of 'local dimming' zones for an LCD display (over 2 million such zones, in fact). The TV itself is very bright (over 2,900 nits) and reportedly offers a great image quality and an almost perfect contrast. HiSense it will release its first ULED XD TVs later this year in China. Apparently SkyWorth is also demonstrating a similar technology at CES.

LG Display is showing 55" transparent OLED TVs at CES 2019, and here's a video that shows the display in action:

LGD says that its 55" OLEDs feature a transparency of 40%. The company has been showing its large-area transparent OLEDs for many years, but we're still waiting for this technology to be commercialized.

LG announced some exciting products at CES 2019, including the world's first rollable TV and the world's first 88" 8K OLED TV. LG also impressed CES attendees with its huge "LG OLED Falls" display.

The "LG OLED Falls" is comprised of 260 55-inch LG OLED TV displays - 76 concave ones, 72 convex ones and 112 flat ones. The whole display is 6 x19.8 meters in size.

Sony announced its 2019 TV range, with two new OLED TVs. First up is the Master-Series A9G, that offers "consumer reference-quality image" and features Sony's X1 Ultimate Picture Processor, Pixel Contrast Booster and an automated calibration mode (including a dedicated mode for Netflix).

The A9G will be available in 55", 65" and 77". The Android TV features Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio - which means that the TV stand doubles as a high end speaker.

As was reported last month, LG Electronics announced its first rollable TV (and the world's first rollable OLED device), the 65" Signature OLED TV R. LG's new TV can roll up into its base, and has three viewing options - full view, line view and zero view. In Line View, there are six different modes, in which the TV can show the weather, the time, a home dashboard and more.

LG's OLED TV R, like the rest of LG's 2019 OLED range, is based on the company's 2^nd-gen Alpha 9 intelligent processor the enables LG's ThinQ AI to offer new display algorithms and Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. The TV also features HDMI 2.1, high frame rate (HFR) support, enhanced audio return channel (eARC), variable refresh rate (VRR) and automatic low latency mode (ALLM). LG's flagship OLED also feature Dolby Atmos for immersive entertainment.

CES is only starting tomorrow, but companies are already unveiling some of the new products and prototypes. Samsung is showing two new Micro-LED TV prototypes, a 75" consumer TV and a large 219" professional signage display.

Samsung did not reveal any details or commercialization plans for its new 75" MicroLED-TV. The company is reportedly close to release a hybrid QD-OLED TV in 2019, but it would seem that Samsung hopes that Micro-LED panels will be the company's next-gen flagship TV technology.