April 2017

Taiwan's AU Optronics reported an excellent quarter, with the best Q1 profit in nine years ($314 million). Regarding its AMOLED business, AUO says that it made "significant progress" this year in expanding its client base. The company's monthly shipments are expected to reach 1 million units in the second half of 2017.

Last month we reported that AUO's AMOLED production yields are improving - and the company resumed production of smartphone AMOLEDs. The company is focused on AMOLEDs for wearables and VR.

According to an industry insider in Taiwan, Samsung is set to acquire Taiwan's PlayNitride for the company's micro-LED technology for around $150 million. Our inside says that Samsung aims to develop micro-LED based displays for VR applications, but may also look into micro-LED based TVs using PlayNitride's technology.

Micro-LED is a promising display technology as it has the potential to enable brighter and more efficient displays compared to OLEDs. It also may be cheaper, but there are still technical challenges to overcome and analysts estimate that micro-LEDs will not be commercialized before 2020.

LG Display reported its financial results for Q1 2017 - with a record operating profit of just over $900 million as the selling price of its display panel increase.

LG Display says that the company is increasing its investment into OLEDs (going forward 70% of its capital expenditures will go to OLED production and R&D), and is also increasing production of OLED TV panels. The company is currently making about 300,000 OLED TV panels in a quarter, but this will be increased to 500,000 in the second half of 2017.

Image retention ("Burn in") is one of the major drawbacks of OLED displays, and a static icon or very consistent displays are always a problem with such displays. When Samsung introduced the Galaxy S8 it implemented a soft home button, which caused some concerns.

PhoneArena confirm that Samsung's home button actually moves around by a few pixels from time to time - obviously to prevent serious image retention. Samsung employed the same trick with its "always on" clock display in previous OLED phones. This is a good way to improve image retention - although it won't solve the problem completely as the icon only moves around by a few pixels each time.

Samsung Electronics announced its financial results for Q1 2017, with the highest quarterly operating profit ($8.75 billion) since 2013 - as Samsung's component business boomed while its mobile phone sales were down.

Samsung Display reports that OLED performance improved compared to both last year and last quarter due to strong demand an increased sales of its new flexible AMOLED displays. Revenue is expected to continue growing in the coming years, mostly due to an increase in flexible OLED supply in the second half ot the year. Samsung is worried however from growing competitiveness for its mid to low-end rigid OLED sales from high-end LTPS LCD panels.

TianMa Micro-Electronics announced that its 6-Gen LTPS AMOLED fab in Wuhan, China, is now starting to produce panels. This is the first 6-Gen AMOLED line in China to enter production. The new fab will produce both rigid and flexible OLEDs.

AMOLED panel produced at TianMa 6-Gen fab, Wuhan

According to reports TianMa is focusing on VR and AR devices, wearable devices and foldable devices. Last month TianMa demonstrated three OLED panels - a 5.5" FHD panel, a 5-inch FHD panel and a flexible 5.46" panel, so it's likely that the smartphone market is also in focus.

OLEDWorks latest panel is the Brite 2 - announced in March 2016. The Brite 2 offers a brightness of 300 lumens, a high CRI (>90) and an efficiency of 60 lm/W. According to the company's roadmap, OLEDWorks aims to release 80-100 lm/W flexible panels by next year.

By 2020, OLEDWorks' panels will have an efficiency of over 100 lm/W and a lifetime of over 50,000 hours (LT70).

Merck is going to discuss its latest soluble OLED material performance at SID DisplayWeek 2017 next month. Merck will detail the printed device efficiencies, voltages, and colors.

According to Merck, the efficiencies of its soluble OLED emitters are now comparable to state-of-the-art vapor-processed devices. Merck will also suggest a move from an evaporated blue common layer device architecture to a printed blue.

LG Display announced that it developed an OLED display with a higher image quality and high color uniformity. LG Display says it is aiming to use these new OLEDs in broadcast monitors.

LGD says that the new displays feature a "Real Black" image. LG Display used various OLED and TFT compensation technologies to achieve this high uniformity and better image quality. LG Display will provide more information at SID DisplayWeek 2017 next month.

The EU launched a new project called HyperOLED with an aim to develop materials and matching device architectures for high-performance, hyperfluorescence TADF OLED emitters. HyperOLED is coordinated by Merck, and the project partners include MicroOLED and the Fraunhofer IOF institute. This three years project received a €4 million grant from the EU.

These OLED emitters will be realized by combining TADF molecular hosts with novel shielded fluorescence emitters, targeting saturated blue emission of very high efficiency at high brightness. The project will also achieve efficiency gains through molecular alignment to enhance light outcoupling.