April 2022

Samsung Electronics reported its financial results for Q1 2022. Revenues hit a new record of 77.78 trillion Won ($61.2 billion USD) and the operating profit was 14.12 trillion Won ($11 billion USD).

Samsung Display's revenues were 7.97 trillion Won ($6.3 billion USD) with an operating profit of 1.09 trillion Won ($900 million USD). Samsung says its mobile display earnings improved from 2021, led by strong demand for OLED smartphone displays and growing adoption of OLED displays in laptops and gaming devices.

BOE has been aiming to supply OLED displays for Apple for a long time. In 2020 BOE did not pass Apple's OLED quality test for the iPhone 12 , but later it it did manage to enter Apple's supply chain, only for aftermarket (refurbished models) 6.06" LTPS AMOLED displays.

According to CINNO Research, BOE recently signed a contract with Apple to supply OLED panels for the iPhone 14, which will be launch in October 2022. This will be the first time BOE is supplying OLEDs to a new Apple device. CINNO says that the contact amounts to 50 million panels, about 25% of Apple's total OLED supply. These will be 6.1" LTPS AMOLED displays.

Samsung Display announced that its OLED displays for laptop applications has received 'Halo Free' verification from the safety science leader, UL, for its glare-free and sharp picture quality.

Samsung explains that LCD displays suffer from light-blurring which occurs when the outline of a bright subject appears white on an image with sharp contrast. This is because even with local dimming, LCDs cannot adjust the backlight brightness exactly on the edge. OLEDs, with their self-lit pixels, do not suffer from this.

According to reports in China, Royole did not yet manage to obtain enough customers for its flexible OLED displays to fund its business, and the company requires a new injection of cash in order to continue its operation.

Royole has started mass producing flexible OLED displays back in 2018 at its Quasi 6-Gen fab in Shenzhen, and has since announced plans to build a new fab in Qingdao. Royole developed innovative OLED technologies and devices, and demonstrated several innovative displays, but it seemed it did not manage to find large actual customers for its displays.

Following the next-generation display industry and market for almost 20 years has taught us about the many challenges standing before companies that aim to adopt unique display solutions in their products.

Following discussions with display professionals, we feel there is a need for a service that assists companies with finding the right displays for them.

In February 2022 it was reported that BOE failed to secure enough driver ICs, and had to reduce its AMOLED production volume. According to new reports from Korea, BOE is still facing IC supply issues, and it is estimated that it AMOLED volume will remain lower than expected at least until May.

The new report suggests that beyond the IC supply constraints, BOE is also suffering from low yields at its new B12 fab in Chongqing, lower than what it hoped for in 2022.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a white OLED device that can be deposited on thin fabrics. The researchers say that this is the world's first such device, as previous white OLEDs, made using a tandem structure, could not be bent on fibers.

For the new device, the researchers developed a single white light-emitting layer. The brightness of the device is up to 700 nits, with an efficiency of 10 candelas per ampere.

Kopin Corporation announced today it has received new orders for its OLED microdisplays and silicon backplane products. These new orders come from new customers.

Kopin says it has started to ship 720p dual-stack 0.49" OLED microdisplays to a new customers, for thermal imaging viewfinders. The company also received a new order for its 2K OLED backplane wafer.

Reports from Korea suggest that Samsung Display is starting to install production equipment in its new 6-Gen AMOLED fab in Asan. The A4-2 line (previously called the A4-E line) is a converted old LCD fab(L7-2) that was closed in early 2021.It is estimated that the A4-2 line will cost around $800 million USD. Samsung hopes to start production in the new production line by Q3 2022, and monthly capacity will be 12,500 substrates.

Samsung Display recently started producing QD-OLED panels (for TV and monitor applications), and according to earlier reports, the production suffered from low yields, estimated at around 30-50% a few months ago.

In a move that is thought to reassure SDC's employees, the company announced on its internal bulletin board that it has managed to increase its QD-OLED production yields to 75%, and it now aims to increase that to 90% or higher.