October 2021

Samsung Electronics reported its financial results for Q3 2021, with record quarterly sales ($63 billion USD) and an increase of 31% in net profits (to $10.5 billion).

The strong performance was mostly thanks to Samsung's chip business and the weak Korean won. Samsung's display business also enjoyed a good quarter, with strong sales of small and medium-sized OLED panels. Samsung's large-area LCD business, though, posted losses as prices of LCD panels declined.

The following is a sponsored post by Novaled

Novaled is a leading provider of proprietary organic materials and complementary innovative technologies for superior OLEDs in display and lighting and for high performance Organic Solar Cells (OSC). Being active in the field of organic electronics, Novaled's skill set is quite unique, combining expertise in physics, chemistry and engineering support. Headquartered in Dresden/Germany, Novaled has also some business and technical presence in Asia. In 2013, Novaled has become part of the Samsung Group.

Milestones in the history of Novaled

Novaled is a former start-up, founded in 2001 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute. After a phase of extensive research and development, from 2006, our materials could be tested by display manufacturers, and successfully made their way into Samsung's mass production right from the start in 2010. Initially, Samsung was the only producer of OLEDs - organic light-emitting diodes.

LG Display announced that it is once again teaming up with British top-tier design magazine Dezeen to launch the second round of the OLEDs Go! global design competition.

Scroll, last year's OLED design competition winner

LGD calls out to designers to develop new and innovative designs showcasing OLED technology in unique and practical. LGD says it is seeking innovative entries that cleverly demonstrate the creativity and potential of its OLED and transparent OLED displays ranging from 20 to 50 inches.

LG Display reported its financial results for Q3 2021. Revenues increased 7% from Q3 2020 to reach 7,223 billion KRW ($6.2 billion USD) while net income was 463 billion KRW ($396 million USD).

LGD says that it enjoyed high demand for IT panels, and its large-size OLED business continues to "strengthen its position in the market as the premium TV sector continues to grow". LGD expects to ship 8 million OLED TV panels in 2021, with record annual profit.

Notion Systems is a leading supplier of industrial ink jet printing systems. The n.jet inkjet platform from Notion Systems is used to produce printed circuit boards, OLED & QLED displays, sensors and high-quality 3D parts.

We present the following interview with the Company's CEO and founder, Dr. Michael Doran.

Q: Hello Michael. Can you detail notion systems' offering for the OLED industry? We understand you offer R&D and production systems, for both RBG printing and TFE printing.

Notion Systems offers a system platform called n.jet display series that prints functional layers at various steps of display production and for a range of display technologies. These include rigid, flexible, OLED, QLED and micro displays. The platform meets the most stringent requirements for process environment and process stability.

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung has decided to build a new flexible OLED 6-Gen (1500x1850 mm) production line (A4E, although this could be a tentative name), which will be located at Samsung's Asan production complex.

The new fab will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates. The first phase (15,000 substrates) will enter production by the end of 2022, and the second phase a year later. Total investment is estimated at over 1 trillion KRW (around $854 million USD).

LG Display announced that it renewed its patent license agreement with Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL). It is not clear from the release, but it seems as if LGD has access to SEL's entire display patent portfolio.

SEL, established in 1980, engages with research and development across many fields, and is very active with OLED technology research. In recent years, SEL developed flexible and foldable OLED technologies, OLED device structures, novel OLED materials, OLED CAAC-IGZO backplanes, and more.

DSCC says that 2021 will see strong growth in OLED production. Flexible OLED production glass input is expected to grow by 36% in 2021, while rigid OLED input will grow even stronger at 42%.

The utilization rates at OLED production lines are still relatively low, especially at BOE's flexible OLED lines. As of the end of 2021, flexible OLED utilization rates are around 70%, rigid OLED utilization is at about 77% while OLED TV utilization is higher at around 85%. LG's utilization rates are lower than earlier in 2021, which DSCC says is intentional to support prices

According to a report from China, BOE will produce around 15 million AMOLED panels for Apple in 2021, or about 10% of Apple's total OLED panel orders.

BOE is supplying displays for refurbished iPhone 12 devices, and Apple is now looking into adopting BOE's panels in the iPhone 13. It is likely that the 15 million shipments estimate relies on Apple's approval of BOE's iPhone 13 panels, and even so it might be a bit optimistic that BOE will supply so many panels by year's end.

DSCC says that LG Display continues to improve the production at its 8.5-Gen WOLED TV fab in Guangzhou, and it finally managed to have the production cost in China be lower than a comparable OLED TV made in Korea.

DSCC estimates that the production cost in China by the end of 2021 will be 13-14% lower than that of LG's Korea fabs.