According to reports from Korea, LG Electronics is getting ready to launch its 65" rollable OLED TV, the 65RX OLED TV globally. It appears as if LG will focus most of its marking online and ship the TV from Korea.

LG started shipping the TV in Korea in October 2020. Last month it was reported that LG sold only 10 units. At around $88,000 its not surprising that LG cannot find many buyers, but it now hopes to find a larger market outside of Korea.

According to reports online, there's a global chip shortage, that is already effecting some industries - and is not threatening the supply of Samsung's smartphone AMOLED displays.

It seems as if high demand for chips due to the covid-19 pandemic, a water shortage in Taiwan and heavy snow in Texas all combined to create a shortage is chip supply. Samsung's Austin plant, which makes Qualcomm chips used in AMOLED drivers, has been halted since February 16th and this creates concern for Samsung's ability to supply enough AMOLED displays to satisfy demand.

In late 2020 several reports from Korea suggested that Apple is looking to adopt OLEDs in future iPad devices, as early as in 2022.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, a usually reliable Apple analyst, Apple is looking to adopt an OLED display in the 2022 iPad Air (while the MacBook Air will start using miniLED LCDs). MiniLEDs are actually more expensive than OLEDs today (these iPad OLEDs will be the cheaper rigid variant) and so cheaper iPads or laptops will use OLEDs from 2022 and onwards, while more expensive models will opt for miniLEDs which do not suffer from burn-in.

According to Trendforce, smartphone brands will increase adoption of AMOLED displays in 2021, which will lead to a 39% market share for AMOLED displays in the total smartphone display market - up from 31% in 2019.

AMOLED displays are increasingly replacing high-end LTPS LCD displays in the high-end part of the smartphone market. The market share of lower-end a:Si LCD is quite stable.

We are happy to announce a new Metalgrass knowledge hub, QuantumDots-Info.com. Our new site focuses on QuantumDots technologies for the display industry. QDs are already used in many displays, and it is likely that the future will bring us more types of QD Displays, including QDEL and QD-OLEDs.

QuantumDots-Info brings you daily news, commentary, resources and updates about QDs in the display industry. You can subscribe to our weekly QD display newsletter here - and if you have not done so already, be sure to also subscribe to the free monthly OLED newsletter!

Samsung Display announced that the company aims to lead the gaming display market, and it will supply more OLED displays for gaming smartphones, in addition to gaming laptops (as it does already). These displays will be branded as "OLED for gaming" displays.

Samsung Display reveals its AMOLED displays were adopted by Asus for its latest gaming smartphone (the ROG Phone 5) - a 6.78-inch 1080x2448 HDR10+ (1200 nits peak) 144Hz AMOLED display.

Researchers from Yonsei University developed a new OLED device that is highly stretchable. The researchers managed to build the entire device, including the substrate, conductive wires, electrodes and OLED layers, from stretchable materials.

The researchers say that this is the first time that the complete display device was produced from stretchable components, unlike previous efforts which have mainly focused on connecting small rigid OLED devices together to create a stretchable device.

OLED compensation technology developer IGNIS Innovation launched an interesting new system that can be used to inspect and fix burn-in problems in Android smartphones.

The system, which IGNIS calls an Automated Optical Inspection System (AOIS) is a tabletop machine that you insert an Android smartphone into, and it identifies areas with image retention. Using software drivers, one can then compensate for these problems. The compensation is based on IGNIS proprietary MaxLife compensation technology.

UBI Research says that shipments of OLED displays reached 577.88 million in 2020, up 3.7% from 2019. Total OLED revenues in 2020 increased only 0.7% to $32.68 billion as average panel price was lower in 2020 (mostly in the smartphone market).

The main growth in the OLED industry in 2020 came from smartwatches and TVs markets. Smartphone and tablet display shipments actually decreased in 2020. In 2020, new market emerged - automotive displays, laptop displays and foldable devices.

DSCC says that foldable smartphone shipments will rise sharply starting in August 2021 - and total foldable OLED smartphone shipments in Q4 2021 will be higher than the whole period from Q1 2020 to Q2 2021 - combined.

There are several reasons for this high increase in projected shipments. First of all, Samsung is expected to release several new foldable smartphones in Q3 2021 - three models in fact, including an "aggressively priced" clamshell foldable.