August 2024

In May 2024, Visionox announced its plan to build 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, with a monthly capacity of 32,000 substrates.

Yesterday Visionox shared some more details about its project and plans. The company will build the new fab with support from two local government-owned firms, both of which are partners at Visionox's existing 6-Gen AMOLED line in Hefei. In the first step for this new project, the three partners (Visionox and the new government firms) will invest a total of $282 million USD. Visionox will only hold 20% of the JV.

LG Display announced that it has started to mass produce its 26.5-inch 480Hz QHD (2560x1440) Gaming OLED panel. This is the world's first 480hz OLED panel, and it offers a 0.02 ms response time, and it is equipped with LG's MLA technology to ehance the light output.

A few weeks ago Acer announced its Predator X27U F3 monitor, that is based on LG's 480Hz OLED, and it's likely that this monitor will start shipping soon.

MicroLED-Connect is the world's first dedicated MicroLED conference and exhibition. The event, organized by TechBlick and the MicroLED Association, will take place next month at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, also known as "the smartest square kilometer in all of Europe", and will include an excellent conference program, masterclasses, exhibition and tours. Register now and enjoy our last discounted rate (until September 13).

Researchers from Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, China, have managed to dramatically increase the stability of OLED devices by the adoption of deuterated host material.

The researchers, led by Prof. Man-Chung Tang, have designed and synthesized deuterated anthracene-based hydrocarbon PNA as the new host material. The researchers have observed that the faraday loss decreases with the increase of the deuteration degree.

UBI Research estimates that 12 million OLED tablet panels will ship in 2024, and increase of over 500% from 2023 (1.84 million units), following Apple's adoption of OLEDs in its iPad Pro devices for the first time.

UBI sees the tablet OLED display market continuing to grow, and is expected to reach 30 million units in 2028. The current market leaders are Samsung Display and LG Display, but other display makers are also targeting this market, with BOE aiming to ship 1.5 million OLED tablet panels in 2024, and Visionox around 800,000 units.

UBI Research says that shipments of foldable OLED smartphone panels more than doubled in Q2 2024 (compared to the first quarter), reaching 9.94 million units. Foldable OLED smartphone panels accounted for 5.2% of the total OLED smartphone display market.

UBI expects foldable OLED panel shipments to continue growing in the second half of 2024, and sees total 2024 shipments exceeding 40 million. By 2028, the company expects foldable OLED panels to reach an almost 10% out of the entire OLED smartphone market.

During iMID 2024, Samsung Display's eVP Yi Chung said that the company plans to reduce the power consumption of its OLED panels by over 50%. SDC is developing several technologies, each contributing to the same efficiency goal.

SDC did not detail its plans exactly, but it did mention some of the new technologies it is working on - polarizer-free OLEDs (these have been commercialized already), multi-frequency driving (demonstrated by other OLED makers), tandem OLED architecture and the adoption of high efficiency blue PHOLED emitters.

According to reports, Meta has decided to cancel one of its VR projects that was planned for 2027. This device was to be a high-end product, similar to Apple's Vision Pro - with a similar high price tag. Following the poor market reaction for Apple's Vision Pro, Meta decided to scrap the project.

The original Oculus Rift

Meta was planning to use OLED microdisplays in its upcoming high-end headset, as these are the best performing displays for such products. It is reported that one of the reasons that Meta is not proceeding with its project is the high price of the OLEDs. These are expensive displays indeed - according to some estimates, Apple is paying $350 for each display, which means around $700 for each headset. On the other hand, it is estimated that OLED microdisplay prices are set to drop sharply in the near future as new capacity comes online, and new players (including Samsung and LGD) start producing displays. 

A report from Korea says that LG Display has successfully developed an OLED panel that is based on a blue phosphorescence emitter. The blue PHOLED, provided by Universal Display, offers 100% IQE, up from 25% used by current fluorescence emitters. This will result in around 20-30% power saving for the display itself (depending on the images shown).

UDC has been developing blue emitters for many years, and recently the company said that the development will take a few more months and won't be ready in 2024. The main challenge is increasing the lifetime of the materials. However LG Display has adopted a tandem design to enable a commercially ready display, perhaps even sooner than UDC planned.

In 2022, we reported that Visionox announced plans to build a new $1.6 billion flexible 6-Gen OLED module production line in Hefei. 

According to a new report from China,the company's construction partner, China Construction First Engineering Bureau, has finished the fab construction, that has passed the completion acceptance. It's not clear what is Visionox's timeline and plans to ramp up the fab and begin actual module assembly, but this is an important milesetone for Visionox's project.