December 2016

LG Electronics published the following teaser - calling our attention to its upcoming 2017 OLED TV range:

This is a clear reference to LG's Wallpaper OLED TVs. These TVs will be extremely thin, and the panel itself sticks to the wall using magnets. In May 2015 LG Display demonstrated a prototype - 0.97 mm thick 55" OLED panel that sticks to the wall using magnets. The entire 55" OLED panel weighs only 1.9 Kg.

Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) released its new OLED supply, demand and equipment quarterly report, and the company supplied some interesting forecasts from that report.

DSCC sees OLED capacity rising from 7.5 million m2 in 2016 to 40.4 million m2 in 2021 - a CAGR of 52%. In terms of shipments, DSCC sees 389 million panels shipped in 2016, growing to 1.34 billion in 2021. Most of the capacity investment in the near future will be for flexible displays - and so flexible mobile OLED capacity will overtake rigid capacity in early 2018.

A couple of months ago LG sent me an OLED for a review - a 65" OLEDB6 TV. I loved that TV - it looked great, the image quality is terrific and the smart operation system is excellent - here's my full review, posted in November.

When I posted my review, I had to return the TV to LG, and go back to my previous one - a 40" Philips LED TV. After a week or so, I gave up, and bought myself a 55" OLEDB6. Now I'm back with an OLED TV, and this one isn't going back to LG!

Researchers from Kyushu University discovered that lifetime of OLED displays is compromised during the evaporation production process due to small amounts of impurities in the vacuum chamber.

The researchers examined the production process and found that there are many impurities floating in the vacuum even when the deposition chamber is at room temperature. They found a strong correlation between the time the OLED is placed in the deposition chamber and its lifetime.

Virtual Reality (VR) means a near-eye display that completely blocks the real world and replaces it with a simulated display. VR displays have been around for a long time - the first VR head mounted displays (HMD) were introduced in the 1960s, but these devices, and those devices that followed it for 50 years suffered from many problems due to primitive technology.

Everything seems to have changed in 2012, when Oculus Rift raised $2.5 million on Kickstarter to develop its VR HMD. Less than 2 years later, the company was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion, and the VR market finally emerged. A good VR experience requires a high end display that features fast response time, high resolution, power efficiency, light weight, and more. OLEDs are the perfect choice for VR displays - especially due to the technology's low latency (as opposed to LCD displays, which are notoriously slow).

Taiwan-based TrendForce says that HTC is the current leader in VR headsets - with a market share of 61.4% between April 2016 and November 2016, but the Taiwanese company will not be able to extend its lead into 2017 as it will be hit the hardest from the OLED market supply shortage.

According to TrendForce, in 2017 HTC will ship 600,000 Vive units, while Sony will ship 2.5 million PlayStation VR units and Oculus is expected to ship 1.2 million units. Other brands, all combined, will ship 800,000 units. All of these VR headsets use OLED displays.

2016 is soon over - and this has been a great year for the OLED industry. Following Apple's reported adoption of OLED displays in its future iPhones, display makers accelerated their OLED production plans. The market share of OLED displays (including flexible OLEDs ) continue to increase and the market is now experience a supply shortage. OLED TVs are also becoming more and more popular.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on OLED-Info in 2016, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

• Lenovo announces the world's first OLED laptop - with a 14" AMOLED display (Jan 4)
• LG announce their OLED TV lineup for 2016 (Jan 6)
• Lenovo demonstrates two foldable device prototypes (Dec 22)
• HSBC: Samsung to release the first foldable OLED phone by the end of 2016 (Jan 12)
• LG's 2016 OLED TVs prices slashed before Black Friday (Nov 9)
• Audi to use OLED taillights in the 2016 TT RS coupe (Jan 12)
• ETNews: SDC and Apple signed a flexible OLED supply agreement for the 2017 iPhone (Mar 21)
• UDC's evaporable emitters still outperform the best soluble materials (Feb 5)
• Samsung confirms it is developing OLED TV panels (Jan 29)
• Samsung Display to ship the 55" transparent and mirror OLEDs in Q2 2016 (Mar 16)

During the International Display Workshops that was help a few weeks ago in Fukuoka Japan, LG Display discussed its new WOLED tandem stack that it plans to introduce soon to its OLED TVs and lighting panels.

LG Display says that its new stack is a "3-stack-OLED" while its existing stack is a "2-stack-OLED". As you can see in the image above, LG apparently counts each emissive layer as a different stack in this case.

OLED Microdisplay maker eMagin announced that it has entered into a $5 million revolving credit working capital facility. The financing will be used for general corporate purposes including funding the inventory build for the company’s recently launched consumer products, BlazeSpark and BlazeTorch. The facility has a term of three years.

Last month eMagin reported its financial results for Q3 0216, with revenues of $4.3 million and a net loss of $2.4 million. At the end of September 2016 eMagin had about $6.9 million in cash, so it obviously needs the new credit line.

IHS says that combine OLED shipments from all active Chinese OLED makers reached over a 1.4 million panels in Q3 2016 . This is still small relative to Samsung's capacity (which made around 70 million panels in the quarter) but a step forward for these companies.

IHS says that strong demand from Chinese smartphone brands (see chart above), mostly Oppo and Vivo boosted the demand for AMOLED displays. Coupled with the reported supply shortage at SDC this created an opportunity for the new OLED makers based in China. In Q2 2016 these Chinese OLED makers produced around 600,000 panels (so production more than doubled in the quarter.