Automotive OLEDs: introduction and industry news - Page 24

UBI Research says that automobiles will start adopting OLED displays "in earnest" starting in 2018 - for instrument cluster and infotainment displays. The automotive display market itself is expected to grow quickly (CAGR of about 17% from 2017-2022) as new technologies mean that displays in cars are getting more and more important.

UBI estimates the total automotive display market at $25 billion by 2022 - out of which OLEDs will account for about 20%, or $5 billion. The main challenge still facing massive OLED adoption, according to UBI, is the lifetime of AMOLED panels.

Electronics automotive products maker Visteon is showing new flexible OLED prototypes at CES. These new OLED panels can be used for either instrument clusters or infotainment displays.

These flexible OLED displays seem quite similar to LGD's 12.3" FHD plastic-OLEDs, but Visteon could be using OLEDs made by a different company as well.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) unveiled its latest concept car, called the Chrysler Potal. This is an all-electric family-oriented minivan that is capable of semi-autonomous operation.

The Portal includes several new technologies for FCA, and the dashboard makes use of two large displays as you can see above. According to OLEDNet, both displays are AMOLED displays developed by Samsung Display - the top elongated one is a flexible plastic-based OLED while the lower one is a glass-based 12" AMOLED.

According to Business Korea, LG Display recently restructured its business so it can better focus on OLED technologies. LG Display's five business units (TV, OLED, IT, mobile and AD) were merged into just three units - TV, IT and mobile.

According to Business Korea, OLED technologies will be the focus of LGD's TV unit, and also of its mobile business unit. The mobile unit now handles all plastic-OLED development, while the TV unit handles the large-area OLED panel production and developement. The new IT unit s still focused on LCD displays (for monitors and laptops). LG's OLED lighting unit is now part of LG's TV business division, and the automotive display business division is now part of the mobile unit.

IHS says that flexible display shipments (mostly OLEDs) will reach 139 million units in 2017 (or 3.8% of the total display market) - an increase of 135% compared to 2016 (59 million units). In 2023 IHS sees shipments of 560 million flexible displays.

In 2017, flexible OLEDs will comprise 20% of the total OLED display market. The growth in flexible OLED adoption will be lead by smartphones - and especially Apple's next-gen iPhone. In 2016 76% of flexible OLEDs ended up in smartphones - and the remainder were used in smartwatches (mostly in Apple's Watch, probably). Next generation flexible OLED applications, including tablets, VR devices, automotive displays and OLED TVs are not expected to be significant until 2023.

Hong Kong-based Truly Semiconductors started working on its AMOLED fab in 2014, and in May 2015 estimated that production will begin in Q1 2016. The fab was delayed, and a few months later it was estimated that production will begin in September 2016.

Truly have finally announced that the fab is now online, and the company is starting AMOLED mass production. Truly published the (rather overdone and weird) video you see above - and according to the video the company is targeting smartphones, wearables, VR and automotive applications.

Yole Developpement released a new report covering the OTFT market for flexible displays and other applications. According to Yole, some display makers in Taiwan and China are currently in the process of industrializing OTFT-based displays - flexible LCDs at first, with flexible OLEDs coming within 2-3 years.

The mobility of OTFTs are already high enough for LCDs (higher than a-Si) - but still not enough for OLEDs. But in 2-3 years this should be resolved, with low-performance (200 PPI) OLED displays for wearables, some consumer applications and embedded automotive OLEDs possible within 2-3 years.

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay, VR/AR, graphene and flexible OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to November 2016.

The OLED for VR/AR Market Report:

• Why OLEDs are adopted in almost all VR HMDs
• What kind of displays are required for VR and AR applications
• What the future holds for the VR and AR markets
• Current and future VR and AR systems

The report package provides a great introduction to the emerging VR and AR market, and details the role that OLED displays will have. Read more here!

LG Display announced its entry to the flexible OLED automotive market back in July 2014, and the company LGD unveiled a 12.3" Full-HD flexible automotive OLED panel in early 2016. LGD is already collaborating with Tesla, Cadillac and Mercedes, but the company's panels are not in production yet the company previously revealed that mass production will only start in 2018.

According to ETNews, LG Electronics Vehicle Components (VC) is now speeding up its process of commercializing automotive OLEDs, and recently hired OLED touch experts. It is not clear if this means that LGD hopes to commercialize automotive OLEDs sooner than 2018 - and in any case ETNews estimates that the first premium cars to feature these OLEDs will only arrive in 2-3 years.

In April 2016 Audi unveiled its 2016 TT RS coupe - with optional OLED taillights. This is the world's first serially-produced car to have OLED taillights, and up until now we did not know the lighting producer (it was rumored to be LGD, but that was later denied).

Today Osram revealed that it is producing those OLED lighting panels for Audi. Osram also reveals that each module contains four patterned OLED panels with a total light-emitting area of 49 cm² and a brightness of 1,000 cd/m². The module is mounted on a holder with a mirrored bezel, guaranteeing optimum visibility on the road.