OLED TV: Introduction and Industry News - Page 34

Update: LG also announces a 65" rollable OLED TV, the Signature OLED TV R

LG Electronics announced its OLED TV lineup for 2019. LG's new OLED TVs will be powered by the company's 2nd-gen Alpha 9 intelligent processor and will offer its ThinQ AI. LG says that the new OLEDs will offer better image quality and sound quality based on the new AI capabilities and new algorithms. All the new TVs will also offer new implementation of Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant.

The top of the range will be the Z9 OLED TV based on LGD's latest large 8K 88" OLED panel. There's a new wallpaper model, the OLED W9, the midrange OLED E9 and the new OLED C9 which is LG's entry level OLED TV model.

LG Display announced the OLED displays it will demonstrate at CES 2019, starting on Tuesday January 8th. We already know that LG Electronics will launch a 88" 8K OLED TV (the OLED Z9) but now LGD says it will demonstrate a 88" Crystal Sound OLED (CSO) panel - which has a sound system built into the panel (which acts as the membrane).

LGD will also unveil a 65" 8K OLED - which you can see in the image above.

According to reports, LG Electronics is set to launch its 8K 88" OLED TV in 2019, and the company will unveil its flagship OLED TV in CES 2019. The 88" TV model number will be OLEDZ9, and like all of LG's 2019 OLED TVs (or at least the high-end ones) it will be based on the company's new Alpha 9 Gen-2 processor and will support HDMI 2.1 and VRR.

According to our information, LG Electronics will also demonstrate its rollable TV at CES (and maybe launch it as a product too) and may also bring its first foldable smartphone to the show as well.

LG Display has already demonstrated rollable OLED TVs (and according to reports it aims to release the first such TV to the market in 2019) - but Samsung has been left behind as its current LCD-QLED TV technology choice does not enable rollable TVs.

LGD's prototype rollable TV (unveiled in 2018) rolls vertically, inside a single case at the bottom. According to a new patent recently awarded in the US (USPTO #10,162,387) Samsung has a different design in mind - a TV that rolls horizontally, as you can see in the image above.

Towards the end of 2015 LG Display announced that it plans to build a new OLED fab (P10) in Paju in a $8.7 billion investment. The P10 was supposed to produce both LCD and OLED displays (mostly OLED TV panels, but also mid-sized flexible OLEDs), and production was planned to begin towards the end of 2018.

In 2017, we heard reports that LGD decided to cancel the LCD production at the P10 fab and focus exclusively on OLED displays. A new report from Business Korea confirms this report - and says that LG also decided to postpone the production at the P10 as the shift to OLED technologies is challenging - especially as LGD intends to produce OLEDs on 10.5-Gen substrates for the first time at the P10 fab.

Earlier this month JOLED unveiled new display prototypes at FineTech Japan. Today we have received this interesting new video from JOLED that shows the displays in action:

In the video you can see all of JOLED's new prototypes. First up is the Automotive demo - JOLED demonstrated two panels, a 12.3" 1920x720 (167 PPI) panel and a 12.2" 1920x1280 (180 PPI) panel. Both are printed on LTPS backplanes (as do the rest of the company's small and medium sized panels). JOLED's latest investors, Denso and Toyoto Tsusho, are both helping the company with its entry into the automotive display market.

According to its plans, LG Display aims to ship around 2.9 million OLED TV panels in 2018, and the Korean panel maker expects that its production capacity expansion will allow it to ship around 4 million panels in 2019.

LGD's largest customer is LG Electronics, but the company is also enjoying strong sales to Japanese TV makers. The Nikkei Asian Review says that in 2018 the company will ship 500,000 panels to Sony and 200,000 to Panasonic, and next year it expects to increase its shipments to Sony to 850,000 units and to Panasonic to 300,000 units. LG Electronics OLED TV market share will be around 50-60% in 2019.

In CES 2018, LG Electronics demonstrated its 65" rollable OLED TV prototype, showing how such a display can be used to create a TV that rolls into its base. Last month we reported that LG plans to showcase its rollable TV again at CES 2019, and now Bloomberg reports that LG aims to actually release this TV as a commercial product in 2019, citing "a person familiar with the matter".

It was already reported before that the rollable TV will take "center stage" in LG's CES event - which hinted that LG is indeed close to commercializing such a device. In 2017, LGD did say it plans to bring rollable OLED TVs to market by 2020.

In July 2017, LG Display announced that it decided to build a 8.5-Gen (2200x2500) OLED TV production line in Guangzhou. Following many delays, LGD got the approval for its new OLED TV fab from both the Korean and Chinese governments only in July 2018.

Korea ETNews now reports that LG Display started to install the production equipment in the Guangzhou fab. LG Display's new fab will have a capacity of 90,000 monthly 8.5-Gen substrates (2200x2500 mm), using two production lines. The equipment in the first line (with a capacity of 60,000 monthly substrates) was already installed, and LGD will soon (H1 2019) start ordering and installing the equipment in the second line as well.

DSCC estimates that the AMOLED market will grow 19% in 2019 to reach $31 billion, up from $26.5 billion in 2018. OLED revenues will continue to grow and reach $48.8 billion in 2022 (a CAGR of 16%).

Looking at OLED unit shipments and area production, 2019 will see a 22% growth in unit shipments to 610 million panels and a 35% growth in area to 9 million square meters. Area shipments will grow faster than revenues as OLED selling prices will continue to decline - and as OLED TVs take up a larger share of the OLED market.