BOE Display - Page 24

In January 2017 Kopin unveiled its first OLED microdisplay, the 1-inch 120 Hz 2k x 2k Lightning panel, and later reported on an "overwhelming" reaction and a first design win. Kopin now announced that it reached agreements with both OLiGHTEK and BOE Technology to meet its production needs.

In the near-term, Kopin's Lightning OLED microdisplays will be produced at OLiGHTEK's Kumnin (Yunnan) fab. Kopin and OLiGHTEK will jointly purchase an advanced production OLED deposition line to be installed within OLiGHTEK’s facility as it will need to expand its production capacity. The new line will be ready for production by the end of 2017. Kopin will be entitled to 50% of the new line output.

BOE Technology and OLED Microdisplay maker OLiGHTEK announced a new joint-venture to produce OLED microdisplays for the consumer VR and AR markets. The new company will be established in Kunming, Yunnan, and will have an annual production capacity of a million OLED microdisplays.

Total investment in the new venture will total $167 million USD. BOE will invest 76.5% of the capital and OLiGHTEK will invest 20%. There is a third partner, Gao Ping Technology from Shenzhen, that will invest 3.5% of the capital. BOE will also apparently invest around $7.2 million in OLiGHTEK. The new company will base its production on OLiGHTEK's technology.

Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) released some very interesting information regarding the mobile OLED market from its recent OLED market report by Yoshio Tamura and Ross Young. DSCC expects mobile AMOLED demand to grow from almost 400 million panels in 2016 to almost 1.2 billion in 2021.

Samsung Electronics, who's already using AMOLED displays in almost 80% of its smartphones will not increase its AMOLED orders by a lot, but shipments will grow dramatically to other players led by Apple, Huawei and Oppo.

Bloomberg says that Apple is in discussions with BOE Display to supply OLED displays for next generation iPhones. According to the story, Apple has been testing BOE's displays for months but has not made a decision yet. The deal under discussion is not for the 2017 iPhone (which will exclusively use Samsung-made OLED), but for the one coming in 2018 or maybe even later.

The 2017 iPhone 8 (or will it be a >$1000 iPhone X?) will reportedly use AMOLED displays for at least one variant. These will be produced by Samsung Display, and reports from 2016 suggested that Apple paid $4.3 billion upfront to secure 100 million panels. A couple of days ago it was reported that Apple ordered an extra 60 million OLED panels from Samsung Display.

BOE Display announced that it signed an agreement with a Hefei municipal government to co-invest 1 billion CNY (around $145 million USD) in a new OLED TV production line in Hefei. BOE will invest 80% of the funds, and the rest will be provided by the Hefei government.

BOE already has a 8.5-Gen pilot line in Hefei, which is actually producing commercial OLED TV panels, albeit in very small volumes. It 2014 it was reported that BOE plans a $1 billion OLED TV line in Hefei.

According to Digitimes Research, OLED display makers in China will increase their total annual capacity from 272,000 m² in 2016 to 7.86 million m² in 2020 - a CAGR or 131.9%.

The largest producer in 2020 will be BOE Display (35% of the Chinese OLED market), followed by Tianma (17.6%), Visionox (14%), Everdisplay (11.6%), CSoT (9.5%), Truly (7.8%) and Royole (4.5%).

According to the OLED Association, BOE Technology's first 6-Gen OLED fab in Chengdu, which BOE started constructing in May 2015, is on track to begin production in the 2nd half of 2017 (later than first estimates, but earlier than the revised ones). Production capacity will be 45,000 glass substrates.

BOE will invest a total of $3 billion USD in this new fab, but part of that is funded by Chengdu's High-Tech Industrial Development Zone. The new fab follow BOE's current 4.5-Gen pilot line that is already producing AMOLED displays.

IHS says that combine OLED shipments from all active Chinese OLED makers reached over a 1.4 million panels in Q3 2016 . This is still small relative to Samsung's capacity (which made around 70 million panels in the quarter) but a step forward for these companies.

IHS says that strong demand from Chinese smartphone brands (see chart above), mostly Oppo and Vivo boosted the demand for AMOLED displays. Coupled with the reported supply shortage at SDC this created an opportunity for the new OLED makers based in China. In Q2 2016 these Chinese OLED makers produced around 600,000 panels (so production more than doubled in the quarter.

Update: It turns out that this specific $61 million deal is not for an OLED fab, but for BOE Display's upcoming Gen-10.5 LCD fab.

Israel-based inspection solutions provider Orbotech announced it signed an agreement to supply inspection and testing solutions for China's BOE Display upcoming OLED TV fab. The deal is estimated at $61 million, and is Orbotech's largest deal in China so far.

Those inspection systems will be deployed at BOE Display's upcoming 8.5-Gen pilot line in Hefei. According to earlier reports, this fab will produce WRGB OLEDs on an IGZO backplane. According to Orbotec, the facility will produce 90,000 TV panels per month in 2019, and when it reacehs full-scale production it will have a capacity of 120,000 screens. Orbotech will start delivering machines in the first half of 2017.

A few days ago we reported that BOE Display started to supply OLED TV panels to Skyworth. Today we have this photo you see below, showing the new 55" UHD (4K) panels. The new panels were produced at BOE's 8.5-Gen pilot line in Hefei.

Skyworth is currently using LGD WOLED panels for its OLED TVs, and in December 2015 the company launched its latest OLED and OLED HDR TVs . Skyworth hopes to sell 200,000 OLED TVs by the end of March 2017. Skyworth said its main problem with those OLEDs is that LG Display cannot supply them with enough panels, especially the 65" ones - so now it seems Skyworth found its answer with BOE Display.