BOE Display - Page 19

Market research firm DSCC says that BOE managed to dramatically increase its yields - which have tripled to over 30% by the end of 2018. The company is expected to continue and improve its yields which will reach, according to DSCC, to almost 60% by the end of 2019.

The increased yields enabled BOE to increase its flexible OLED production at its first B7 line from 125,000 units per month in Q3 2018 to almost 1 million panels per month in Q4 2018. BOE's main customer is Huawei - with its Mate 20 Pro. The increased yields means that panel production costs are falling - and DSCC actually expects BOE's production costs to fall below SDC's by the end of 2019 as BOE's fab costs are subsidized - as can be seen in the image below.

Earlier this month we reported that BOE started to construct its 3rd 6-Gen flexible AMOLED production line in Chongqing's Liangjiang district (the B12 line). The Chongqing line will join BOE's first flexible 6-Gen OLED fab in Chengdu (the B7) and its second line in Mianyang.

BOE now announced plans for another large investment in a new flexible OLED fab, this one in Fuzhou, Fujian. This fab will be similar to BOE's other fabs - a 6-Gen (1500×1850 mm) line with a capacity of 48,000 substrates. The investment will total 46.5 billion Yuan (about $6.75 billion USD). This fourth line will bring BOE's total flexible OLED capacity to 192,000 monthly substrates.

According to reports from China, last week BOE started to construct its 3rd 6-Gen flexible AMOLED production line in Chongqing's Liangjiang district (the B12 line). The investment in the new fab will total 46.5 billion Yuan, or about $7.3 billion USD.

The B12 line will have a capacity of 48,000 monthly substrates - which will bring BOE's total flexible OLED capacity to 144,000 monthly substrates (second only to Samsung).

South Korean prosecutors indicted a group of 11 executives and employees of Korea-based Toptec, a Samsung Electronics supplier, accusing them with leaking Samsung's flexible OLED technology to Chinese display makers. The group includes Toptec's president and managing director.

According to Nikkei Asian Review, the Toptec's executives supplied the stolen information to four companies in China - including BOE and CSoT. The cost of the information was 15.5 billion Won - or almost $14 million USD. Toptec produces display production automated equipment.

BOE's 1.4" round 454x454 AMOLED panels are now available on The OLED Marketplace. This is a high-end AMOLED display, suitable for smartwatch applications and more.

BOE started producing this display in 2017. This display was adopted, for example, in Fossil's Men Explorist smartwatch. If anyone is interested in these displays, let us know. Click here for more information on this panel.

CLSA says that as OLED displays are too expensive for many smartphone makers and lack enough differentiation to LCDs, the company is lowering its OLED adoption forecasts. CLSA now expects China's OLED smartphone shipments to total 116 million in 2018, 143 million in 2019 and 168 million in 2020. CLSA lowered its forecasts by 12-21%. In terms of penetration into the total Chinese smartphone market, CLSA sees 14% in 2018, 18% in 2019 and 21% in 2020.

Looking at the OLED makers, side, CLSA sees ample OLED supply in coming years, which means that expansion is likely to slow. CLSA assumed that OLED makers will achieve 70% yields and a utilization rate of 90%, which will bring all OLED makers to have a combined production capacity of around 288 million 6" panels in 2020. As demand will be only 168 million by Chinese phone makers (and remember there's also Samsung and LGD of course), this will create quite an oversupply situation in China. CLSA cuts its China OLED production forecasts by BOE, Tianma, Visionox, CSoT and Everdisplay by 23% to 26% in coming years.

BOE is hosting its Global Innovation Partner Conference 2018 (BOE IPC-2018, which invited experts from all over the world to see BOE's latest technology and future trends.

During the event, BOE unveiled an ink-jet printed 55" UHD OLED TV prototype. This is the first time that BOE demonstrated an ink-jet printed TV (in May 2018 BOE unveiled 5.5" FHD flexible AMOLED which was also produced using a printing process).

Last week we reported that some Huawei Mate 20 Pro complain about a green tint in the smartphone's 6.39" 1440x3120 AMOLED display.

In our original post we reported that these displays are produced by BOE. However, according to Hernán Castañón (@hema), Huawei actually uses OLEDs produced by both LG Display and BOE - and all the faulty phones are one that use LGD made panels.

BOE is ramping up its AMOLED production, and according to CLSA its target for the second half of 2018 is to produce 3 million panels. BOE is reportedly the supplier of AMOLED panels to Huawei's Mate 20 Pro smartphone, but CLSA says that the company is struggling to find customers from other smartphone makers.

According to CINNO, BOE produced around 1.7 million panels in the first half of 2018 - which means that it plans to almost double its shipments in the second half of the year.

A few days ago Huawei started shipping the Mate 20 Pro with its 6.39" 1440x3120 (538 PPI) AMOLED display made by BOE. The phone is only shipping in China at the moment, but some users are complaining about a green tint issue.

This seems to be a similar issue that happened on some of Apple's iPhone X OLED displays (which are produced by Samsung Display).