Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) says that OLED material revenues grew 43% to reach $869 million in 2017. DSCC expects the OLED material market to grow at a 24% CAGR until 2022, when the market will reach $2.56 billion.

The small/medium display market accounts to about 59% of the total OLED material market, and this will continue until 2022. For the TV market, DSCC expects ink-jet printing to enable producers to make lower the material costs of OLED TV production, and OLED TV materials will grow at a rate of 23%, from $344 in 2017 to $963 million in 2022.

ETNews posted an interesting article, claiming that Samsung Display is developing a new TV technology that combines OLED emitters with quantum-dot photo-luminescence materials. The basic idea is to use blue OLED emitters and then convert the blue light to white light using quantum-dots combined with color filters (QDCFs) to add red and green colors.

Samsung OLED TVs (2013)

This seems to be a rather complicated design, but it could be much easier to produce compared to a true RGB OLED TV, as there is no need for precise OLED patterning. This is similar to LG's WRGB OLED TVs which use a white OLED source (made from yellow and blue emitters) and color filters on top.

In the past few weeks we heard many reports that following lower than expected OLED orders from Apple (due to disappointing iPhone X sales) Samsung Display has suddenly found itself with under utilized OLED production lines.

Samsung already said that it aims to find new customers for its OLEDs, mostly in smartphone makers in China. Some analyst say however that this won't be so easy as the higher costs of SDC's AMOLED displays deter some of its potential customers, who prefer to opt for lower-cost high-end 18:9 LCDs.

Japan-based chemical producer Nagase announced that it invested ¥500 million Yen ($4.6 million USD) in Hyperfluoresence TADF materials developer Kyulux. Nagase is currently offering materials for LCD producers, so this is likely to be a strategic investment for the company.

Kyulux’s first aim is to develop commercial red, green and yellow hyperfluorescence emitter/host combinations, to replace the 2nd-Gen phosphorescent emitters currently used in OLED displays and lighting panels. In 2017 Kyulux announced a collaboration with PMOLED maker WiseChip to bring Hyperfluoresence TADF emitter based displays to the market by the year's end.

UBI Research estimates that AMOLED shipments reached 440 million units in 2017 (up 13.6% from 2016), with revenues reaching $27.1 billion (up 62.3% from 2016). Only yesterday did DSCC release its own estimates of $23.2 billion in revenues for the AMOLED market in 2017.

The AMOLED market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.5% to reach almost a billion units in 2022. Revenues will grow faster at 22% and reach $80.5 billion in 2022.

Universal Display announced that it has signed long-term OLED material supply and license agreements with Samsung Display. UDC will continue to supply its PHOLED phosphorescent OLED materials and technology to Samsung Display for use in its OLED displays. The agreements are scheduled to run through December 31, 2022, and may be extended for an additional two-year period.

UDC did not disclose the financial terms of these new agreements, but we do know that Samsung will pay a license fee throughout the agreement period. The previous UDC-SDC agreement ended on December 31st 2017, but for the past month and a half the two companies still conducted business of course as SDC's OLED production was not halted.

DSCC says that OLED revenues reached $8.8 billion in Q4 2017, growing 62% from the previous quarter and 120% from Q4 2016. The main drivers of this growth are shipments for the iPhone X and OLED TV panel growth in the holiday season. In 2017, OLED revenues reached a record of $23.2 billion, a growth of 57% from 2016 ($14.7 billion).

DSCC says that smartphone revenues accounted for 87.4% of the total AMOLED market, and OLED TV shipments had a 5.6% share ($1.3 billion in revenues). The 3rd largest application is smart watch panels (3.2%).

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 to produce both mid-sized flexible OLED and large-sized OLED TV panels. LGD considered for a while whether this new fab will be based on Gen-8 production or Gen-10.

According to a new report from Korea, LGD has ordered its first batch of deposition equipment for the P10 line, which will be Gen-10.5 (2940 x 3370 mm). The first line will have a production capacity of 30,000 substrates per month, which will greatly increase LGD's total OLED TV production capacity. LGD finished the construction of the building and the fab is expected to be complete in the first half of 2018.

We're happy to announce a new market report: the PMOLED Market Report. This report, brought to you by the world's leading OLED experts, is a comprehensive guide to passive matrix OLED displays (PMOLEDs). The PMOLED market is projected to grow rapidly, fueled by demand from wearables and by flexible and transparent displays, but is overlooked by most analysts focused on the (much larger) AMOLED market.

Reading this report, you'll learn all about:

• Applications of PMOLED displays
• Next generation PMOLED technologies
• Flexible and transparent PMOLEDs
• AMOLED vs PMOLED

The report also includes:

• Information on all PMOLED producers
• Current and future PMOLED fabs
• Automotive PMOLEDs
• Display catalogs and datasheets
• Free updates for a year

On January 2018 OLED microdisplay maker eMagin announced that it plans to raise $11.5 million in an underwritten public offering, and on the company's filing it mentioned five specific investors - Apple, LG Display, Valve Corporation, Stillwater Holdings and Immerex.

While we all assumed these companies invested in eMagin, the company released a statement yesterday saying that this is not the case - "As of today, to the Company’s knowledge, none of these consumer electronics companies have taken part in the offering.". eMagin's CFO says that "eMagin listed those companies in the filing because it had discussions with them at industry event".