May 2024

As OLED technologies are making inroads into the aerospace industry, LG Display has teamed up with Boeing and LIG Nex1 to introduce a new aircraft smart cabin concept, utilizing the company's latest OLED displays.

The three companies started collaborating back in 2020, to realize how OLEDs can benefit aircraft interior design. For this project, LG Display developed aircraft-specific OLED panels, ensuring higher reliability and safety compared to regular OLED panels. The new smart cabin concept includes a 55" OLED panel that is installed at the aircraft entrance, curved OLED at the aircraft's ceiling, 30-inch transparent OLED panels placed in the cabin partitions, and a 27-inch OLED panel in the crew galley.

According to a report from Korea, LG Display has started to produce 13.4" tandem AMOLED panels for Dell, to be used in the upcoming 2024 XPS 13 laptop. LGD will produce 100,000 such panels for Dell at its E6 production line (the same line used to produce Apple's iPad Pro displays).

The tandem OLED displays will enable longer lifetimes, and also increased brightness / efficiency. Interestingly, Dell says the displays will only feature a brightness of 400 nits. The full display specification: 13.4" 3K+ (2880x1800) 60Hz 400 nits AMOLED panels. 

The display industry's top conference, SID DisplayWeek 2024, took place two weeks ago in San Jose, California. This was an interesting event, and fruitful, and a good chance to see almost the entire industry in the same location. OLED is clearly the leading display technology, but it seems that there is not much new innovation, it's difficult to think of a demo or prototype or technology that we have not seen before. Next-generation technologies, mostly microLEDs and QD-ELs, were also very prominent. Here's a list of all our articles from SID:

• Samsung Displays shows its latest OLED and QD-EL displays at Displayweek 2024
• Samsung shows an inkjet-printed 18.2" QD-EL prototype 
• LG Display shows its latest OLED technologies at Displayweek 2024 
• LG Display developed a 10,000 nits OLED microdisplay 
• BOE shows new OLED displays at Displayweek 2024
• Innolux demonstrates microLED display prototypes at Displayweek 2024
• Impressions from the MicroLED Association's meeting at DisplayWeek 2024 
• TCL CSoT: OLED, MicroLED and QD-EL displays 
• TCL CSoT announced a $1 million prize to accelerate QD-EL technology
• AUO: impressive microLED displays at Displayweek 2024 
• Tianma shows its latest OLEDs and MicroLEDs at Displayweek 2024
• Tianma shows promising micro-Fluidic ePaper display 
• Visionox demonstrates its latest ViP OLED and Vistar's MicroLEDs 
• SEL demonstrates a 15,000 nits direct-emission tandem OLED microdisplay
• E Ink shows its latest ePaper displays, panels and solutions 
• MEGAMORPH demonstrates its graphene-based display technology at Displayweek 2024 

We hope this coverage will be useful, and we also came back with some insights and data that will be incorporated into the OLED Toolbox's next edition. We also shared several videos from the event - you can view them all here. 

Omdia says that China's OLED makers have been making rapid progress with their foldable OLED capabilities, to the point that in the first half of 2024, China's production of foldable OLED panels will surpass Korea's.

Omdia predicts that in the first half of 2024, Samsung Display will produce 5.7 million panels, while China's producers will produce 6.4 million panels. The market is set to grow quickly, from 10.7 million units in 2021 to 30 million panels in 2024. The market leader remains Samsung (47% in 2024H1), followed by BOE (40%), Visionox (9%) and TCL CSoT (4%).

Visionox is the latest company to announce a new AMOLED production line, targeting the IT display market - laptops, monitors and tablets. The company said that it will best 55 billion Yuan (around $7.6 billion USD) to build a 8.6-Gen production line in Hefei, Anhui province.

Visionox's production line will have a monthly capacity of 32,000 substrates. The company did not share any details regarding the timeline of this project, or its financing.

Collins Aerospace, and Panasonic Avionics Corporation have co-developed a next-generation business class suite, called MAYA, which combines the two cmoapnies expertise in design, technology development and integration into a singular integrated solution.

The MAYA suite's centerpiece is a 45-inch curved 4K OLED display, which according to the two companies, provide "users with unprecedented immersion, customization and feature rich personalized viewing experiences". The suite is packed with lot's more technology, of course, and it utilizes recycled, reusable and plant-based materials along with a composite structures to reduce production waste.

China-based Tianma had an impressive booth at Displayweek 2024, showing numerous OLED and microLED displays and prototypes.

For the automotive market, Tianma showed three new display prototypes. First up is a 13" slidable OLED, with an embedded touch panel, aimed towards car dashboards or center controls.

Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) demonstrated its latest OLED microdisplay technology at Displayweek 2024. The 1.5" 3840x2880 (3207 PPI) display achieves a brightness of 15,000 by using a tandem architecture and a direct-emission design. The OLED deposition was performed using photo-lithography. 

This is an impressive display, with very high brightness. It surpasses LGD's 10,000 nits microdisplay also shown at Displayweek, which uses a white-OLED with color filter design, and a microlens array. It matches eMagin's 15,000 nits microdisplay, demonstrated back in 2023 - which is a single stack device.

Earlier in 2024, Panasonic unveiled two new OLED TVs, the Z95A and Z93A, its flagship OLED TVs for 2024. Now Panasonic announced three new OLED TVs, which makes its 2024 OLED offering quite robust.

The Z90A OLED TV is similar to the flagship Z95A, but its WOLED panels do not use MLA. The Z90A, available in 65, 55, 48 and 42-inch sizes, offers HCX AI Mk II processor and gaming, and a built-in soundbar. The Z85A is offered with 55-inch and 65-inch only, with lower-end WOLED panels (120Hz rather than 144Hz). Finally, the entry-level Z80A, also in 55- and 65-inch sizes, offer the same 120Hz 4K WOLED panels, but has an older version of Panasonic's HCX Pro AI Processor.