October 2024

BOE launched a new flexible AMOLED display, branded as Q10 AMOLED, that has a new OLED stack and delivers increased performance - the company said that compared to its previous flagship OLED stack, it enhances the peak brightness by 12.5%, the lifetime by 33%, and it reduces the power consumption by 10%. The company also says the color saturation and response time is increased.

The new Q10 display will debut at three smartphones, the OnePlus 13, OPPO Find X8 and Vivo iQOO 13. That specific screen is a 6.8" 3168x1440 (510 PPI) 120Hz LTPO AMOLED. DisplayMate tested the new display, and says it is the world's highest performing mobile display ever, seting or matching 21 performance records. It is the first display to receive DisplayMate's A++ rating.

TCL CSoT has announced several times in the past that it plans to start producing OLED display using an inkjet printing process by the end of 2024, and a new report from Korea updates the latest status from the company.

TCL CSoT originally said it will produce OLED TV panels, but later updated its plans to produce IT displays. According to the Elec, the company has decided that its first panel to be produced is a 21.6" monitor displays for medical devices. The company has unveiled this panel in SID 2024 - it has a 4K resolution and a peak brightness of 350 nits. 

In this article, we examine the theoretical question of whether or not it makes sense for LG Display and Samsung Display to merge, into one company.

Note that we have no indications that such a merger is even considered by the two companies, but we feel this is a fascinating topic that should be explored, and is supported by several strong arguments.

We'll start with a short introduction to the two companies, then see why there are many reasons to pursue a merger, then explain the reasons against a possible merger, and finally detail the current financial situations of both companies.

Samsung Display and LG Display

Samsung Display Corporation (SDC) is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. SDC is a leader in OLED production, with a market share of over 40% in the small OLED display market (the second largest player, BOE, holds a market share of around 15%). SDC produces over 300 million AMOLED displays per year - supplying them to Apple's iPhones and tablets, Samsung Electronics Galaxy phones, and many more. The Company also produces larger-area QD-OLED panels for TVs and gaming monitors, and has a capacity of producing around a million TV panels per year. SDC no longer produces any LCDs. SDC does produce microLED displays (but on a very small scale, this is currently a strictly next-gen display technology), and the company develops OLED microdisplays (and also holds OLED microdisplay producer eMagin which it acquired in 2023 for $243 million).

LG Display announced that its entire lineup of OLED TV and monitor panels, from 27 to 97 inches (all of its WOLED panels), have become the world’s first displays to receive Eyesafe Circadian Certification. LG Display’s OLED TV and monitor panels achieved the highest circadian certification rating (CPF 50).

EyeSafe, a US-based company specializing in blue light mitigation solutions, says that LG's OLED panels are promoting eye health and better sleep, as the emit just 36% blue light, the lowest in the industry.

OLED TVs offer excellent image quality, outperforming LCDs with superb contrast, excellent and vivid color reproduction and fast refresh rates. In addition, OLEDs enable thin and efficient TVs. OLED TV production has been increasing up until a year ago, reaching a potential capacity of around 10 million units. This is impressive, but considering the entire global TV market that amounts to around 250 million units, OLEDs represent only around 2.5% of the total market (it is important to note that OLEDs tend to be produced in large sizes and carry a much higher average selling price compared to LCDs).

But OLED TV production capacity growth has declined in recent years. In this article we will shortly detail the history of OLED TV production, and look at potential paths towards increased penetration in the future. More details and into the future of OLED technologies and OLED TVs is included in the OLED Toolbox.

A bit of history: in 2013, both Samsung and LGD started producing OLED TV panels. Samsung chose the straightforward RGB side-by-side architecture, in which there are three sub-pixels, with red, green and blue OLED emitters. LG chose its own WRGB (or WOLED) architecture (the IP was acquired from Kodak in 2009) which uses four white OLED subpixels (made from yellow and blue OLED subpixels). Both companies released 55" FHD OLED TVs, priced at over $10,000 per unit. It soon became clear that Samsung's approach was not scalable, while LGD managed to enter mass production quickly and reduce prices dramatically within a few years to compete with the dominant LCD TV technology.

Rain Technology announced a new technology, called OLED Switchable Privacy, that is designed to protect OLED displays. Rain Technology says that its privacy technology already shipped in millions of LCD laptops and other displays, and is now ready for OLED displays for the first time.

OLED Switchable Privacy is embedded in the display panel smartphones, tablets or laptops, directing and controlling light from the display, thus allowing enterprises, consumers and application developers to hone unprecedented levels of automated visual security. 

Researchers from Korea's UNIST institute, together with colleagues from Sungkyunkwan University have developed a new OLED intermediate layer material (with a highly unusual structure, twisted EBMs with anisotropic molecular arrangements) that significantly improves the brightness, efficiency and lifetime of blue phosphorescence OLED devices.

The researcher report that the new materials enable to reduce the operating voltage of the OLED display, thus enhancing the power efficiency by 24% and the operational stability by 21%. The researchers say that this new material can also be used for in-organic LEDs (including microLEDs).

LG Electronics is going to add screensaver ads to its TVs, including its high-end OLED TV range. It seemed the company has already started testing this new feature, which shows full-screen ads, and the company will offer a way to turn the ads off, as it markets the new ad system a "feature".

LG Ad Solutions company announced the new "Native Screensaver Ads" feature, that "capitalizes on idle screen time, turning what may be perceived as a period of downtime into a valuable engagement opportunity".

Sony announced a new OLED Microdisplay, the ECX350F, a 0.44" 120Hz 1920x1080 (FHD) microdisplay that offers the world's highest brightness at 10,000 nits. It also offers the world's smallest pixel size at 5.1 um (the PPI is around 5,000).

Sony says that in order to reach this high brightness, it adopted a new OLED stack structure, a new "semiconductor process" and added a microlens array on top of the display. In addition, the bezel size of the new display is exceptionally small, with only 1.14 mm of added bezel on the long side of the display on both top and bottom.