August 2021

DSCC says that demand for Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3 is very strong in Korea, with pre-orders in the first seven days reaching over 900,000 units. Demand in India is strong as well.

DSCC sees Samsung's foldable OLED production volume up dramatically from July compared to last year. In fact the volume in July was higher than the combined volume of the production in January-July 2021. From August 2021, DSCC sees production of over 1 million foldablephones per month.

Taiwan-based INT Tech announced that it has produced new AMOLED microdisplay samples at its $143 million fab in Taizhou in Zhejiang province, China, and the company is still on track for mass production in Q4 2021.

The new 0.7-inch INT Tech uNEEDXR display is a direct-emission display that features a brightness of over 5,000 nits, 3147 PPI and a low power consumption (less than 500mW@5000nits).

At the iMID 2021 conference in Korea, Samsung Display demonstrated a speaker that uses a 12.4" folding-out AMOLED display:

The AI-powered speaker device connects to your phone and can unfold to show a larger image.

Airbus and Royole teamed up to demonstrate a digital inflight magazine - that makes use of a thin flexible OLED panel.

The two companies have been working together since 2018, and are now presenting a prototype device. The device looks like an iPad, but feels like a flexible magazine. The OLED display looks better than currently-used LCD displays in airplane seats, and also consumes less power and are also lighter.

According to a report from Korea, LG Electronics decided to launch its 42-inch OLED TV in 2022. The company first planned to launch it in the second half of 2021. The TV/monitor will target gamers, with support advanced video processing at 120Hz and a 4K resolution.

The reports says that LG decided to do this due to marketing considerations - while LG Display still plans to start production of the 42-inch panels before the end of the year.

DSCC says that OLED shipments in the second quarter of 2021 rose 36% over last year (but decreased 10% compared to Q1 2021). New smartphone launches by Samsung, Apple and Google will drive the growth at the second half of 2021.

Samsung Display is still the leading smartphone OLED producer, with a market share of 73.5% in Q2 2021. BOE was at second place with a 6.7% share.

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OLED microdisplay maker eMagin has been developing direct-emission OLED microdisplay (also called directly-patterned, or dPd) for many years, and is considered to be the leading company - the closest one to commercialize such a display. A dPd will enable much higher efficiency/brightness compared to current designs based on color filters.

In the past eMagin reported of several leading companies that have licensed the technology and/or are working with the company towards the design of custom dPd OLED displays for future AR/VR products. In 2017 for example eMagin reported of a Tier-1 CE company that licensed its dPd tech, and in 2020 the company said it started a new consumer-related AR development project for a next-generation display for a Tier-1 customer.

According to reports from China, TCL will start supplying smartphone AMOLED panels to Samsung Electronics. TCL is already supplying LCDs to Samsung (for both phones and TVs), but this is the first time it will supply OLEDs as well.

Samsung is looking to lower its smartphones production costs, and so it widens its OLED supply chain. Up until now, the company relied 100% on AMOLEDs produced by Samsung Display, but earlier this year it started to buy OLED panels from BOE.

DSCC updated its AMOLED material market forecast, saying that the market will reach $1.4 billion in 2021 (up 32% from 2020), and grow at a 16% CAGR from 2019 ($927 million) to 2025, to reach $2.18 billion by 2025.

DSCC takes a look into the material cost for LG Display's WOLED TV panels. LGD will likely manage to implement incremental improvements in material utilization and price, which will enable the company to almost halve the material cost of its TV panels- from $88.14 per sqm in 2019 to $47.19 per sqm by 2025.