Foldable OLEDs: introduction and market status - Page 5

According to a report from Korea, Samsung Display will unveil a new display at CES 2023, which is both foldable and slidable. The display is 8-inch in size when folded, opens up to a 10" display when unfolded, and then can be slided further to 12.4".

The display will be shown in a private booth, which will not be open to the public. It is likely that this display is still at an early stage of development, as there are many challenges such as durability and quality that Samsung will need to overcome. The report suggests, though, that Samsung is ready to soon commercialize such a panel.

The Elec reports that Samsung Electronics is set to launch a foldable OLED laptop next year, using a 17.3" AMOLED display produced by Samsung Display. HP is also gearing up to release its first foldabl OLED, with a 17-inch display produced by LG Display.

Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED

Foldable OLED laptops are exciting, but current prices are very high, and so demand is low. The Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED for example, which uses a 17.3-inch display made by BOE, costs $3,500 - a very high price for a laptop. It is reported that Asus only ordered 10,000 displays from BOE as it understand it cannot ship many units at this price, and HP also not planning for many sales of their own first-gen foldable laptops, and have ordered a similar number of displays.

UBI Research says that according to its latest information and forecasts, shipments of Samsung's rigid smartphone AMOLED displays declined to 19 million units in Q3 2022, a drop of over 50% compared to last year. Rigid smartphone OLED display sales will continue to decline at an annual rate of 12.9% and will reach only only 96 million units in 2027.

Flexible OLED sales will continue to increase at a rate of 7.4% from 2022 to 2027. In 2027, Samsung Display will ship 220 million flexible OLED displays, while BOE will ship 140 million OLEDs.

According to reports from Korea, Apple is designing a new foldable MacBook laptop, that will adopt a large 20.25 foldable OLED display. Apple is collaborating with Samsung or LG Display on this project, the report does not detail that.

The reports also suggest that Apple is looking into smaller foldable display - including a foldable iPhone and a foldable iPad Mini (10-inch when open) - but these projects aren't confirmed yet.

Samsung announced two new foldable phones, and new wearable devices. First up is the Galaxy Z Fold4 which sports a 7.6" foldable 120Hz 1200 nits 1812x2176 Dynamic AMOLED and a 6.2" 120Hz 904x2316 AMOLED 2X cover display.

The Galaxy Z Flip4, the company's clamshell device,features a 6.7-inch 120Hz 1200nits 1080x2640 foldable Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and a small secondary 1.9" 260x512 Super AMOLED display. Both phones will ship on August 25, starting at $2,000 for the Fold4 and $1200 for the Flip4.

In January 2022, Asus announced its first foldable laptop, the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED. The innovative device offers a 17.3" 2560x1920 foldable OLED display (supplied by BOE) that can fold in half to become a 12.5-inch device with dual 1920x1280 displays.

ASUS now announced that it will officially launched the foldable laptop before the IFA 2022 trade show on August 31. Asus announce da virtual event on August 31 (14:00 CEST). This will be an interesting event to watch.

Samsung Electronics says that it expects its sales of foldable OLED devices to increase, and even exceed its annual historic Note series sales (which is now discontinued). The company is set to start offering foldable displays in mainstream devices.

According to IDC, Samsung shipped around 190 million Note devices in total. So far, Samsung sold just over 10 million foldable phones, since launching the original Galaxy Fold in 2019. But if we look at specific phones, the gap is not so big: The last Note device, the Note 20, sold around 12 million units. The Note 10 sold around 14 million units. According to estimates, Samsung shipped around 8 million Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 3.

This is a sponsored post by Coherent

Lasers are utilized for numerous processes in flexible OLED production, just as they are in the manufacture of other display technologies. In fact, it can be reasonably claimed that lasers are a key enabling technology in the fabrication of modern, flat panel displays. And it’s likely that they will continue to perform essential fabrication steps as flexible and foldable displays become more commonplace.

There is a variety of processes within the flexible display production line where lasers have an essential contribution to enable high throughput, high yield mass production. Nowadays, the complexity of the displays is getting larger and the number and tasks of lasers within flexible OLED production is increasing.

For this reason, choosing the right laser really means choosing the right laser supplier. Manufacturers need a partner who has the specific technical and applications development resources to identify the best and most cost-effective solution. Coherent is that partner

TCL's CSoT demonstrated a new prototype AMOLED display - a 17" IGZO foldable panel, that was produced using inkjet printing. The company says this kind of panel can be used in tablets, monitors and laptops.

CSoT is progressing with its inkjet printing technology, and aims to start production in 2023. Last year the company demonstrated a 65" 8K inkjet-printed OLED TV panel, in addition to a 14" rollable panel.

Korea-based OLED equipment maker AP Systems (APS) announced that it developed a new system to deposit optically transparent resin (OCR) using an inkjet printing process.

Current OLED production uses an adhesive tape (OCA) to connect the cover glass to the display. But OCA is time-consuming and relatively expensive. OCR, on the other hand, is deposited directly on the panel and is more cost effective. We recently reported that Samsung Display aims to adopt OCR technology in its foldable OLEDs to reduce costs, and is testing inkjet systems made by STI.