OLED Tablets - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 12

We have many rumors lately regarding Apple's OLED iPhones - mainly that the iPhone X sales are disappointing and Apple is considering discontinuing its 5.8" OLED iPhone range in 2018 and only releasing a larger 6.5" model this year.

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent reported its financial results for CYQ4 2017 and as Coherent supplies laser equipment for FPD makers, it is usually a good indicator to the OLED market expansion stages. According to Coherent, there has been no real change in the timing of equipment shipments, and the company did not notice any hesitancy among display makers in china regarding the scale up of new OLED fabs. In fact the company says that the "momentum that is behind OLED seems to be quite strong and quite sustainable over a long period of time".

A display supplier we're in touch with has just received 750 pcs of Samsung's 7.67" 1280x800 Super AMOLED Plus displays (circa 2014). These displays were adopted by Samsung and other device makers mostly in tablets (the first one was in the 2011 Galaxy Tab 7.7).

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7

The supplier is offering these displays at a very low price (almost half their regular price), if anyone is interested in these panels, contact us here!

Universal Display announced today that Royole has signed an OLED evaluation agreement. UDC will collaborate with Royole and supply its proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent OLED materials and technology for Royole’s display applications.

UDC did not disclose any more details or the financial terms of the agreement. Royole is constructing a 5.5-Gen (Royole calls it a Quasi-6-Gen) flexible OLED production facility in Shenzhen, China. The new fab is scheduled to begin operation in 2018 and will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates.

Update: it seems this is an E Ink (monochrome) device and not an OLED one...

According to our sources, flexible OLED developer Royole is set to release a new tablet device that uses an OLED display. The tablet, which will be called the Royole RoWrite Wordpad, will have a display sized at around 6-7 inch. Royole did not officially announce the device yet.

Royole is constructing a 5.5-Gen flexible OLED production facility in Shenzhen, China. The new fab is scheduled to begin operation in 2018 and will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates. In addition to flexible OLED production and R&D, Royole also develops VR headsets, and in 2016 Royole launched its first product, the Royole Moon foldable VR headset - that uses OLED microdisplays to achieve a PPI of over 3,000.

Samsung started shipping its Galaxy Book 12" - for $1,125 (4GB RAM, 128GB storage) or $1,325 (8GB RAM, 256GB storage). The Galaxy Book 12" is a Windows 10 professional tablet that features a 12" 2160x1440 Super AMOLED display, an intel i5 CPU, 4/8GB of RAM and 128/256 GB of storage.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3 is now shipping in the US for $699 (Wi-Fi edition). This gaming and entertainment optimized Android V7 tablet features a 9.7" QXGA (2048x1536) Super AMOLED display, a quad-core Snapdragon 820 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, microSD slot and quad-stereo speakers.

According to report from Korea, Samsung Electronics has decided to start adopting OLED displays in all of its tablet devices and to increasingly use OLEDs in laptops. The Galaxy Tab S3 is the company's latest OLED tablet.

According to a report in Korea, Samsung Electronics has decided to start adopting OLED displays in all of its tablet devices and to increasingly use OLEDs in laptops.

Samsung Display is currently producing OLEDs for tablets and laptops in a limited quantity, as most of its OLED capacity is dedicated to mobile phone displays. According to ETNews SDC will continue to gradually convert its LCD lines to OLED and the ultimate goal of SDC is to only produce OLED displays for mobile devices.

Lenovo recently demonstrated two new foldable device prototypes that use flexible OLED displays. First up is the CPlus, a smartphone that turns into a smartwatch or actually a smart "band" that is worn on the wrist.

The CPlus sports a 4.26" display, and is based on Android. Lenovo aims to make two version of this device, when it reaches the market - a small one and a large one.

Samsung is working on foldable displays for many years, as the company is looking to release a foldable phone that will be able to merge the phone and tablet markets (or possible a small phone that opens to a smartphone sized display). The company has recently accelerated its efforts, and such a phone may be released in 2017.

Foldable OLED concept (2013)

The main technology development drive is centered on the foldable OLED display itself - which is being developed for many years. According to a new report by ETNews, Samsung has decided to "test the waters" with a foldable phone that uses two different displays. This dual-screen phone will be easier to produce than a phone with a foldable OLED display. Of course the two displays, even if these are very thin-bezel ones, will still not merge to a real single display when the phone is open.

Apple's move to adopt OLED displays in its future iPhone devices has been reported so many times, that analysts assume that this is highly likely to happen in 2017 or 2018. It seems that now they are starting to look further down the road, and respected Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI expects Apple to adopt flexible AMOLED Panels in its 2018 iPads.

Back in 2015 it was reported that Apple wants to use OLEDs in future iPads - and that the company contracted JOLED to produce those OLEDs. That 2015 report was probably groundless, but it seems plausible that if Apple moves to flexible OLEDs, it will eventually want to adopt these displays across its entire mobile product line. Whether there's anything behind this latest estimation from KGI, I do not know.