July 2019

2019 is shaping up to be a dramatically-low investment year for the OLED industry. DSCC for example expects that the market will fall 88% in 2019 compared to 2018. Two companies reported their financial results this week, with interesting notes about the OLED market.

First up is France-based effusion cells and sources producer Riber. The company reported that H1 2019 revenues in its evaporator business fell from €10.4 in H1 2018 to only €1 million. The sharp decline is linked to the "freeze on investments in OLED screen production equipment following the major investments made in previous years".

Dell started shipping its XPS 15 2019 laptop with the 15.6" UHD (3840x2160) OLED display (produced by Samsung Display). The price of the OLED models starts at $1,799.

The Verge recently reviewed another OLED laptop, the HP 2019 Spectre x360 15, which uses the same SDC 15.6" display. The Verge says that the OLED is tremendous, and the reviewer sees "no reason why someone would pick an LCD over this OLED, given the option".

Taiwan-based driver IC developer Novatek Microelectronics says that it expects shipments of AMOLED drivers will double from 3 million in Q1 2019 to 6 million in Q2 2019.

Novatek reported its financial results, saying that its last quarter was the best one in 11 years, as profits grew 34% from last year to $68.5 million. Growth at Novatek is fueled by strong demand for OLED drivers and TDDI chips.

In April 2019, after early reviewers reported that that the foldable screen in their Galaxy Fold devices broke down after a day or so, Samsung decided to delay the release of its foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold.

Following three months of re-design, Samsung now announced that it fixed all the issues in its foldable smartphone and is ready to start shipping in September 2019. Here are the list of changes that Samsung announced, including both design and construction improvements:

LG Display announced its unaudited financial results for Q2 2019, and updated on its upcoming OLED projects.

First of all, LGD announced an additional investment of KRW 3 trillion ($2.5 billion) P10 10.5-Gen OLED TV fab in Paju. Last month it was reported that LG display has started to install some of the Oxide-TFT deposition equipment (supplied by Applied Materials and Jusung Engineering). The mass production at the first lines in the P10 fab is expected to begin in 2021. LG Display did not disclose any more details regarding this new $2.5 billion investment plan yet.

Apple is currently using an LGD 1.57" 394x324 LTPO AMOLED display (1.78" 448x368 on the larger 44mm version) in its latest Watch smart wearable device. Apple's involvement in Micro-LED displays started in 2014 when it acquired LuxVue, and it was always assumed that Apple's main aim for the new display technology is to adopt it in wearable devices.

According to a new report from Taiwan, PlayNitride and RiTDisplay are in talks with Apple to supply microLED displays for Apple's next-generation Watch wearable. A micro-LED display could offer much higher brightness and efficiency compared to an AMOLED display, both of which could be highly desirable in wearable devices.

LG Electronics installed a beautiful flexible curved OLED signage installation at Korea's Incheon Airport.:

LG has a long history of OLED installations at Incheon airport. In November 2015 LG installed a huge 13x8 meter OLED signage display made from 140 55" 4K OLED TV (a total of 290 million pixels). That was the world's largest OLED display at the time.

The United States Department of Energy (DoE) granted $1.05 million for OLEDWorks, allocated through the DoE's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The funds will be used to further improve efficiency and lower the costs of flexible OLED lighting panels, which will help reduce energy consumption while simultaneously providing healthier, unique lighting solutions that are cost competitive in the main stream lighting markets.

In November 2018 OLEDWorks announced that its first flexible OLED lighting panels are now commercially available. The OLEDWorks LumiCurve Wave are produced on Corning's 0.1mm thin Willow Glass flexible glass substrates. OLEDWorks says that the Wave panels are extremely thin and light and deliver the superb light quality and excellent color rendering that is uniquely achievable with OLED.

PlayNitride demonstrated its latest Micro-LED displays at SID DisplayWeek 2019 - a 7.56" 720x480 (114 PPI) transparent MicroLED, a flexible Micro-LED on a polyimide substrate and a high-brightness, high-resolution passive matrix MicroLED aimed towards wearable applications.

PlayNitride aims to release its first Micro-LED display products by the end of 2019. In 2017 the company started to sample micro-LED panels and shipped samples to 10-20 potential customers.

Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) is developing several exciting OLED technologies, and the company demonstrated its latest panels at SID DisplayWeek. The recently published video below shows the company's OLED technologies shown at the event:

First up is the world's smallest 8K display, a 8.3" OLED (1058 PPI) with a resolution of 7680x4320. The panel is based on a white OLED with color filter architecture and SEL's proprietary CAAC-IGZO (c-axis aligned crystalline In-Ga-Zn-O) backplane material.