June 2024

Sidtek announced that it is starting trial production of OLED microdisplays at its upcoming 12-inch fab in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China. The company is on track to initiate mass production before the end of 2024.

Sidtek is currently producing its OLED microdisplays on a 8-inch production line, also in Wuhu. The first phase of its new 12-inch fab will have a monthly capacity of 6,000 substrates, and the company is planning an expansion to 18,000 substrate (which will be ready in 2027). The total investment in the 12-inch fab (including the 2nd stage and another, third phase) is estimated at 6 billion Yuan (around $840 million USD).

According to a report from Korea, Apple has sent an RFI for both Samsung Display and LG Display, seeking more information about the two companies capabilities regarding the production of OLED microdisplays. It is speculated that Apple is seeking to change its OLED supplier in a future, lower-cost VR headset.

Apple specifically mentions a white OLED with color filters architectures (i.e. not a direct-patterned device), a panel size of 2 to 2.1 inch and a display density of around 1,700 PPI (which is rather low, Sony's 4K microdisplays used in the Apple Vision Pro for example offer a density of almost 3,400 PPI).

DSCC says OLED revenues are expected to grow 12% in 2024 and reach $44 billion. OLED panel shipments will grow 18% in 2024. The fastest growing OLED market segments are tablets and monitors.

OLED tablet panel shipments will increase 202% in 2024, and this will result in a 632% increase in revenues, driven mostly by Appe's first adoption of OLED panels in its 13" and 11.1" iPad Pro tablets. OLED monitors will grow slower, but still impressively - 80% in shipments, and 45% in revenues.

Kopin announced that it has been chosen to develop a high-resolution eyepiece assembly, based on its OLED microdisplays, for use in the new Commanders Launch Assembly (CLA), used in the US Army’s Next Generation-Short Range Interceptor (NG-SRI) system.

The NG-SRI system will replace the currently-used Stinger missiles, and will be faster, will be able to overcome energy jamming - and it will be able to hit challenging targets like drones, with greater precision and accuracy. Once the development is done and production begins, Kopin estimates it will generated $5-10 million per year for sevearl years.

Omdia estimates that in 2024, OLED technology has finally overtaken LCD and now holds a market share of 53% in the smartphone display market. OLED penetration is expected to increase to 56% in Q3 2024.

Omdia further says that smartphone shipments have increased 5% in 2023 to reach 1.45 billion units, and the market will continue rising in 2024. 

LG Display says that it has started to mass produce tandem OLED laptop panels, the first company to do so. LGD says its tandem architecture double the lifetime of its OLEDs, reduce power consumption by up to 40%, and enable up to three times the brightness.

LGD has been producing tandem OLED displays since 2019, mainly for the automotive industry. This expertise has enabled it to be Apple's main tandem OLED display suppler for its 2024 iPad Pro devices, and now to be the first one to produce tandem laptop panels. 

According to a report from Korea, following several years if R&D, Poongwon Precision has finally achieved high enough FMM quality and production yields to receive an approval from Samsung Display. 

The company is now gearing up to start mass producing 6-Gen FMM sheets in Q3 2024, and expects to receive the first orders from Samsung Display in September. The company is also in talks with BOE and CSoT for the supply of FMM (although it seems that it will focus on SDC until at least 2027). 

DSCC says that shipments of OLED for tablets in Q1 2024 rose 131% from last year, to reach 1.72 million units, as Apple started to adopt OLEDs in its iPad tablets. In fact, shipments to Apple represented 47% of all OLED shipments in the quarter (following by Huawei at 25% and Samsung at 17%). 

DSCC sees the growth continuing to accelerate - and in Q2 2024 shipments will rise to 3.9 million units, or up 333% from Q2 2023, as Apple, Microsoft, Huawei and Samsung will all enjoy an increase in OLED tablet sales. 

The Zapp Group, which will celebrate its 325th anniversary in 2026 and has launched a major new investment project with the construction of a 12,000 m² production hall for precision foil at its Unna site, in Germany.

The company has come a long way in the past few centuries. Having started in the Leppe Valley of Germany as a small forging shop, Zapp is now a leading metals supplier and one of only a few suppliers in the world that can produce ultra-thin foil from stainless steel, cobalt nickel or titanium alloys. This major investment will further expand its dimensional spectrum down to thicknesses of up to 0.015 mm and widths of up to 650 mm.

A report from Korea suggests that Dowoo Insys is planning to IPO in 2025. The company will list on the Korean Exchange, and it plans to file the preliminary information and documents by the end of the summer.

Dowoo Insys was established in 2010, to develop glass products for the display industry. The company's main product is thin flexible glass covers for foldable displays - UTG glass - which it supplies to Samsung Display (its main customer). Dowoo does not produce its own glass - it buys flexible glass from Schott and then treats it in its own facilities.