Automotive OLEDs: introduction and industry news - Page 26

Today we published new versions of all our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay, flexible and graphene 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 July 2016.

The Flexible OLED Market Report:

• Why flexible displays and lighting panels are so exciting
• What kind of flexible displays are currently on the market
• What the future holds for flexible OLEDs
• How to acquire flexible OLEDs for your products

The report package provides a good introduction to the flexible OLED market - present and future. It details both flexible displays and lighting technologies. Read more here!

In October 2013, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) launched a new flexible OLED lighting project called R2D2 with an aim to investigate new production technologies, including roll-to-roll techniques.

R2D2's coordinator Fraunhofer FEP, now reports that the project has been successfully completed. OLED production processes and market sectors were thoroughly analyzed, the potential for improvement was identified and realized. The project partners developed a series of OLED lighting applications combining special design features with efficient fabrication techniques.

Futaba has been producing flexible PMOLEDs since 2013, and the company demonstrated its flexible OLEDs at SID 2016. Those OLEDs are flexible, but not bendable by the user (which is why Futaba calls them film-type OLEDs).

Futaba's current range of flexible OLEDs include several panels. A 1.4" 128x16 white one (introduced in 2013, was adopted in Huawei's Talkband and Garmin's Vivosmart fitness trackers), and a larger 1.8" white 160x32 panel entered mass production in November 2015.

Update: LG Display sent us a message stating that this report is not correct, and the company does not supply the OLEDs to Audi...

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 indeed this is one of the highlights in Audi's new car.

Up until now we did not know who produced the OLEDs for Audi, but according to ETNews, LG Display is the supplier of these OLED lighting panels. LG is gearing up to supply OLEDs to other autotmobile makers, and has recently announced plans to invest in a Gen-5 (1000x1200 mm) OLED lighting fab that will be located in Gumi, South Korea.

Samsung Display demonstrated several new OLED prototypes for the automotive market at SID 2016. The company showed three different panels - a transparent OLED, a mirror-OLED and a 'regular' OLED. All three were 7" in size, but with different resolution and specifications.

So first up we have the transparent OLED. This is a 7" panel with a resolution of 480x272 (79 PPI). The transparency is 45% and the brightness is 1,000 nits.

LG Display had a large booth at SID, showcasing its latest OLED technologies. This was an impressive display with some beautiful screens, even though LGD did not actually demonstrate any new panels, and all those demonstrations were shown at CES 2016 in January.

So first up we have the 77" UHD HDR OLED TV, the Signature OLEDG6. This was the first time I saw this TV, and it was simply stunning. The TV won the best-of-show award at SID, and it was truly merited.

Analyst firm IDTechEx has just released their new market forecasts for OLED displays. IDTechEx expects the market will reach nearly $1.6 billion this year and will grow to $57 billion in 2026.

For the last two years, the company has correctly predicted that plastic OLED and flexible OLED would be the major trend in displays. In the latest report, IDTechEx has revised their market forecast upwards based on the planned increase in production capacity.

According to the Korea Times, Tesla is in talks with LG Display for the possible supply of OLED panels to the electric car maker.

It's not clear, but it's likely that Tesla is interested in OLED displays rather than OLED lighting panels. LGD announced its entry to the flexible OLED automotive market back in July 2014 - and indeed back then the company already said it signed OLED supply contracts with several car makers in Germany - including Daimler-Benz. In January 2016 LGD first unveiled its 12.3" Full-HD flexible OLED panels for the automotive market.

Audi's CEO said that the Germany automaker is working on a new A8 generation, to launch in 2017. The new A8 will sport several new technologies (Such as piloted-driving) and also a new design - specifically OLED taillights and OLED displays for the infotainment system.

A couple of weeks ago Audi unveiled the 2016 TT RS, which sports (optional, it seems) OLED taillights.

Today we published new versions of all our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay 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 May 2016.

The Flexible OLED Market Report:

• Why flexible displays and lighting panels are so exciting
• What kind of flexible displays are currently on the market
• What the future holds for flexible OLEDs
• How to acquire flexible OLEDs for your products

The report package provides a good introduction to the flexible OLED market - present and future. It details both flexible displays and lighting technologies. Read more here!