JOLED - Page 7

During the OLED World Summit, an analyst from UBI gave an interesting presentation, showing the company's view of the current status of the OLED TV industry, and their OLED market forecasts for upcoming years.

So first of all, we have LG and Samsung. LGD has obviously been successful in launching WOLED OLED TVs, and scaling up to mass production has been achieved. LG is also hopeful that solution processing will enable them to produce RGB-structured OLEDs efficiently. LG is collaborating with Merck and Espon on printing technologies.

According to a report from Japan, JOLED is set to establish a new OLED research facility in Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture in a $161 investment. The facility will include a pilot line that will be able to produce samples by the end of 2016, and the facility will also evolve into a mass production fab that will begin production by 2018 (this will require, of course, a much larger investment).

JOLED is mainly targeting medium sized (10 to 30 inch displays) to be used in tablets, laptops and monitors. JOLED is reportedly in talks with Apple regarding a possible iPad AMOLED supply agreement. This new report from Japan actually suggests that Apple aims to team up with both LGD and JOLED for a tablet OLED supply agreement - with LG Display to start supplying tablet OLEDs at the end of 2016 and JOLED To join when the new facility is ready in 2018.

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.

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). A report from Korea's ETNews claims that Apple has contracted JOLED to produce OLED displays for next-gen iPad tablets.

Earlier estimates said that JOLED will begin pilot production in the second half of 2017 and mass production in the second half of 2017, which seems more reasonable then the current ETNews estimates which are quite aggressive - mass production for Apple by the end of 2016.

LG Display's CEO, Han Sang-Beom, says that LG expects to ship 600,000 OLED panels in 2015 and 1.5 million in 2016. The company wants to be the OLED leaders, and Han says they expect competition soon from Chinese, Korean and Japanese makers (he specifically mentions JOLED) but LG aims to lead from the start in this market.

LG Display says that the global high-end TV market is estimated at about 4 million sets, which means they actually aim to capture a 37.5% market share. This also means that even in 2016, LG sees OLEDs remaining in the "high-end" segment.

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...

Japan Display is exhibiting in the Display Innovation 2014 event today in Yokohama, Japan, and the company is showing a flexible OLED for the first time. The prototype panel is 5.2" in size and features a FHD resolution. JDI refers to this display as a "Sheet OLED", which probably means it can be curved on a surface but it is not flexible/bendable.

Last month Sony, Japan Display, Panasonic and the INCJ formed a new OLED company called JOLED to focus on medium sized OLEDs. JOLED will be launched in January 2015 and has the potential to become a large OLED player.

A few days later, OLEDNet reported that JOLED is likely to choose small-molecules OLEDs, Oxide-TFT backplanes, Sony's Super Top Emission technology and an WRGB pixel architecture. Today I found Sony's original press release (a month late, actually), and there's some interesting information in there.

Last month Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic announced the formation of a new OLED company. JOLED, funded by the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, will be established formally in January 2015, and will focus mainly on medium sized OLEDs for tablet applications.

JDI 5.2-inch FHD OLED prototype

One of the key questions surrounding JOLED is the technology choice. While Sony (and JDI, which is basing its OLED program on Sony's tech) is using small-molecule OLEDs and an evaporation process, Panasonic based its OLED development on Sumitomo's PLED materials and printing technologies.