OLED Tablets - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 8

Samsung launched a new range of mobile devices, most of which feature AMOLED displays. The new smartphone range starts with the Galaxy S22 which sports a 6.1" 120Hz 1300 nits 1080x2340 Dynamic AMOLED 2X, and the Galaxy S22+ which offers similar specifications but with a larger 6.6" AMOLED which is also brighter at 1,750 nits.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra features a 6.8" 120Hz 1750-nits 1440x3080 Dynamic AMOLED 2X, and also stronger specifications, including up to 1TB of storage, 12GB of RAM, a quad camera setup with a main 108MP sensor and an S Pen stylus.

DSCC has released its latest OLED market forecast, and the company forecasts a 8% CAGR revenue growth, with the market reaching $64 billion in revenue in 2026. The growth will be fueled by high demand for laptop, monitor and tablet displays. The smartphone and OLED TV market will also continue to grow.

DSCC sees a 31% CAGR shipment growth for laptop displays, to reach around $2.4 billion in 2026, and a 95% CAGR unit growth for monitor OLED displays, which will reach $1.3 billion in 2026 (up from $200 million in 2022). This is fast growth for monitor OLED displays, but slower than DSCC previously estimated, due to competition for miniLEDs, rigid OLED capacity that will be used for laptops and tablets and lower demand to mirroring display monitors.

DSCC posted an interesting article, comparing the production costs of OLED vs mini-LED panels for IT. DSCC estimates that for tablets and notebooks, a tandem structure will be used, and the panels will be based on rigid substrates.

In the chart above you see a production cost comparison, between 2021 and 2025, for 12.9" panels. DSCC looks at two OLED production options: a tandem OLED panel with an LTPO backplane produced in a 6-Gen fab, and a similar panel that uses an Oxide-TFT backplane and produced in a larger 8.5-Gen fab. As you can see, OLED panels are more cost effective, and will remain so throughout the forecast period.

DSCC released its later OLED market forecasts, which now includes 2026. DSCC sees the rate of OLED market growth decelerating, with revenues reaching just over $60 billion in 2026.

Most of the growth in the next 5 years, according to DSCC, will come from new IT applications: OLED displays for monitors, laptops and tablets.

A few days ago we posted that Apple has reportedly decided to delay its iPad OLED launch to 2023, and the company canceled its current joint development project with Samsung Display, as SDC could not develop what Apple wanted - a tandem stack structure, which would have improved the lifetime and performance of the AMOLED display.

According to a new report from Korea, LG Display is also developing a tablet display for Apple - a 12.9" AMOLED panel. LG's iPad display will be ready for mass production by 2023-2024, and it will use a tandem (2 stacks) architecture on an LTPO backplane. As SDC's project is canceled, it is likely that LG's 12.9" will be the first OLED adopted by Apple's tablets.

Reports from Korea suggest that Apple has decided to delay its iPad OLED launch to 2023, and the company canceled its current joint development project with Samsung Display.

SDC aimed to develop a 10.86 AMOLED display for Apple's iPad. According to earlier reports, Apple wanted SDC to developed a tandem stack structure to improve the OLED device lifetime and brightness - and also to reduce burn-in problems. Apparently SDC is not ready to start tandem OLED production next year, and Apple will not accept a single-stack OLED for tablet applications.

UBI Research estimates that sales of 10" and larger OLEDs (used in tablets, laptops, monitors - and also TVs) reached $2.95 billion in the first half of 2021, up from $1.22 billion a year before. Shipments reached 10.29 million units.

In the first half of 2021, 3.4 million OLED TV panels were shipped. The rest of the units (6.89 million) were of displays used in laptops and tablets, mostly.

DSCC has published its latest OLED market forecast. The company raised its 2021 revenue expectations by 9% (to $42.5 billion) as it sees increased smartphone display shipments and higher OLED laptop shipments.

DSCC also increased its long term OLED revenue forecast by 11% to $60.6 billion by 2025. This is driven, again, by higher smartphone AMOLED shipments and increased adoption in IT markets (tablets, laptops and monitors).

UBI Research says that the market for medium to large OLED displays (10-inch and up, used in IT and TV applications) has risen 156% in Q1 2021 compared the Q1 2020. Total sales reached $1.45 billion in the quarter.

Most of the growth comes from TV and laptop displays. LG Display produced 1.6 million OLED TV panels in the quarter, while sales for laptops reached 1.1 million panels. TV panels accounted for the majority of sales (as average panel price is much higher) - 81.6% of the market.

Apple's latest iPad Pro tablets use a mini-LED backlit LCD (which Apple refers to as Liquid Retina XDR). This relatively new display technology is seen as a way to achieve almost OLED-quality contrast ratio and an improved power consumption as the thousands of small LEDs enable very small dimming zones.

While most reviews of the new display are quite positive, some users are complaining of "blooming" - the edges of bright objects on dark backgrounds tend to 'bleed' as the dimming zone is not small enough.