Japan Display - Page 6

JOLED's head of business development, Tomoaki Tsuboka, announced that the company developed two OLED panels, a 12.2" FHD (180 PPI) panel and a 19.3" 4K one (230 PPI) - made using printing technologies. JOLED aims to mass produce such panel in 2018.

Tomoaki updates that JOLED is preparing a Gen-4.5 fab to produce such OLEDs - probably using printing technologies. Reports from 2015 suggested that JOLED plans to invest $160 million in a new R&D and production facility - that will indeed commence production by 2018.

Last week we reported that Kyushu University spun-off a new company, called Kyulux, to commercialize the TADF emitters developed at Kyushu. Kyulux raised $13.5 million USD, and today the company made an official announcement - including the full investor list.

It turns out that besides LG Display, Kyulux lists Samsung Display, Japan Display and JOLED as investors. The round was led by Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and other participants include top tier Japanese venture capital funds, and a Japanese Government affiliated venture fund.

ETNews says that Apple chose Samsung Display as the company's primary OLED supplier, and the two companies signed an official contract. Flexible OLED supply for Apple's next iPhone will begin in 2017.

ETNews further claims that other display makers are fighting to become Apple's second OLED supplier. There's a high chance that LG Display will be chosen, but the company has not yet been able to secure enough production capacity. Sharp/Foxconn and Japan Display are competing with LGD for Apple's OLED business.

The OLED Association posted an interesting story detailing their forecasts for the OLED market's growth between 2014 and 2018. In the bottom line, the OLED-A expects the OLED market to grow at a CAGR of 22% in that period. Capacity will grow from 1 million sqm in 2009 to 6.8 million sqm by the end of 2018.

The small/medium non-flexible OLED segment is seen as stagnating in 2016, with a relatively modest growth starting in 2017. Overall growth will be 7% CAGR in 2014-2018 as many small players will grow their capacity (but will not reach large volumes) or enter the market and it seems that SDC will not increase production by much. In 2018 nine companies will produce small-sized rigid OLEDs, led by Samsung (62%), JDI (8.8%), AUO (8.3%) and LGD (5.4%).

According to reports from Japan, JDI (Japan Display) wants to acquire JOLED. JOLED was launched in August 2014 by JDI itself together with Sony, Panasonic and the INCJ. JOLED is focused on medium-sized OLEDs for tablets and laptops, and reportedly aims to start pilot production in early 2017 and mass production towards the end of 2017.

According to the new report, JDI was interested in Sharp's LCD division, but Sharp finally decided to sell out to Foxconn (although that deal is not final yet). JOLED is JDI's second choice, and the Japanese companies aims to integrate their business by the of 2016.

Japan Display's research center chief, Akio Takimoto, says that JDI will begin producing OLED panels in 2018. JDI will take advantage of their advanced TFT technology as it aims to catch up with Samsung and LG.

JDI probably aims for 2018 following many reports that Apple aims to start adopting OLEDs in that year's iPhone models. Apple is reportedly already in talks with Samsung and LG as they need to secure a huge amount of production capacity - but it's likely that Apple will prefer teaming up with JDI over its Korean smartphone rivals.

In a rather confusing presentation, Japan Display's COO Shuji Aruga stated that JDI aims to increase its non-smartphone display panel business to $4.05 billion by 2019 (up threefold from 2014). According to Digitimes, OLED displays will amount to almost 40% of that, or about $1 billion.

It's not entirely clear what is meant by that figure... are these OLEDs for non-smartphone applications? Most companies are targeting OLED for smartphones, actually. According to the figure above, OLEds will only take up about 33% of their non mobile-display market, anyway, and not 40% as was reported by Digitimes. It's not that we actually put a lot of faith in 5 year forecasts anyway.

Japan Display demonstrated their flexible OLED panels, which they refer to as film-type OLEDs. The panels on show are 5.2" in size with a Full-HD resolution (423 PPI). These panels use a WRGB (white-OLED with color filters) architecture. Similar panels have been on display in 2014.

Note that for some reason JDI had a sticker saying "In plane Switching" near those OLEDs. IPS is an LCD technology, so this was probably done erroneously.

DisplaySearch estimates the worldwide smartwatch display market at $204 million in Q1 2015. The leading provider was LG Display - with over 90% of the market ($186 million). Other leading players are SDC (3.1%), Japan Display (2.4%) and Futaba (2.4%).

LG Display's lead is not surprising - the company is providing the flexible plastic-based OLED displays used in Apple's watch - and reportedly produced over 6 million panels for Apple, at $20 each. LG is also providing panels for LG Electronic's smart watches (including the G Watch R and the Watch Urbane). In Q4 2014, by the way, LGD only produced 1.1 million displays - impressive growth in just one quarter, attributed mostly to the Apple supply deal.

JOLED (Japan OLED) was launched in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic with an aim to become an OLED medium display producer (focusing at first on OLEDs for tables, laptops and signage). Today the company was finally officially established and began operating.

According to reports from Japan, JOLED is headed by Orbotech Japan former president, and employs around 260 people. JOLED is owned by INCJ (75%), Japan Display (15%), Sony (5%) and Panasonic (5%). The company's current plan is to focus on 10-20 inch OLEDs and to begin pilot production in H2 2016 and mass production in 2H 2017. JOLED will mainly target laptops and tablets. It will great to finally get an OLED laptop, but hopefully we won't have to wait till 2017...