LG pOLED: introduction and market status - Page 4

LG Electronics announced that its latest smartphone, the V50 ThinQ 5G is off to a great start, having sold 100,000 units in Korea in the first week following its launch. LGE says that this is more than four times than the sales of its V40 smartphone.

The V50 ThinQ 5G sports a 6.4" 1440x3120 pOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a microSD slot. LG's first 5G smartphone also offers a triple camera setup.

LG Display announced that it has shipped over 100 million automotive displays. The area of all the displays the company has produced so far is equivalent to around 1.5 million m², or 200 football fields. LG is supplying its automotive displays to Daimler Benz, BMW, Hyundai Motors, Toyota, Honda, Tesla, GM, and more.

LGD is currently producing only LCD automotive displays, but the company has been developing pOLED automotive for many years. LGD now says that it will start producing automotive pOLED displays by the end of Q2 2019, in its 6-Gen E5 flexible OLED line in Gumi, Korea.

LG announces three new smartphones that feature AMOLED displays. First up we have the G8 ThinQ, a high end smartphone that features a 6.1" 1440x3120 Crystal Sound OLED, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, a microSD slot and a triple camera setup.

LG also offers a variant called the G8s ThinQ which sports a slightly larger display (but with lower density) - a 6.2" 1080x2240 pOLED. Otherwise the specifications are quite similar. The idea is that a CSO display vibrates and turns into a diaphragm - to produce high quality sound. LG says that such a speaker improves the clarity compared to regular smartphone speakers. The G8 ThinQ will also use other audio technology, including DST-X 3D Surround Sound emulation, Hi-Fi Quad DAC, Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) and more.

LG Electronics says that it will introduce its first 5G smartphone (the V50 ThinQ 5G, which will probably use a pOLED display) in MWC 2019 next week - as it hopes this will help it rebound its smartphone business. At MWC it will also launch its G8 ThinQ with its Crystal Sound OLED.

Regarding foldable OLED technology, the LG's president says that it is still premature to release a foldable phone. The company says that its technology is ready - and in fact LG already introduced its rollable OLED TV which is even one step ahead of foldable technology. If consumer reaction to foldable smartphones is positive the company is "fully ready to respond".

LG Display reported its financial results for Q4 2018 - it reported an operating profit of ₩279 billion ($250 million USD) due to strong shipments of IT panels and OLED TVs. LGD however gave a weak outlook to 2019 (for its LCD business).

LGD says that it will invest $7.1 billion in 2019 in capacity expansion, and $3.5 billion in 2020. It will divert all of its investments into OLED displays - with 60% going to large area OLED TV production and 40% going to small/medium pOLED production.

LG Display has been demonstrating its pOLED automotive displays for a long time (reportedly it signed an agreement with Mercedes back in 2016, and with Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors in 2018).

During the company's recent conference call, LGD's CFO, D.H. Seo, said that they expect to see some revenus from its automotive pOLED business "by the end of 2019".

Google's 2017 Pixel 2 XL was one of the first phones to adopt LG Display's pOLEDs (6" 1440x2880) - and initial reviews of the display were rather dismal - as both reviewers and customers complained about bad color reproduction, graininess and problematic viewing angles. Many users also reported serious image retention issues.

In 2017, Google used Samsung's Super AMOLED displays in the smaller in 2017. This year, for the 2018 Google Pixel 3, Google chose SDC's 6.3" 1440x2960 Super AMOLED for the larger Pixel 3 XL - with proved to be a top-notch display. For the smaller Pixel 3, Google picked LG Display's 5.5" 1080x2160 - probably hoping that LGD managed to improve its displays - and most importantly its quality controls.

Display measurement experts Display Mate posted an in-depth review of the Google Pixel 3 XL 6.3" 1440x2960 AMOLED display. The display wins DisplayMate's highest ever Overall Display Assessment Grade of A+ together with a DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Award.

DisplayMate says that Google now joins Apple and Samsung as the top tier of smartphone displays. The Google 3 XL display is on par with the AMOLED display used in Samsung's Galaxy S9. Interestingly, it turns out that Samsung Display provides this 6.3" AMOLED display to the Pixel 3 XL, while LG Display is likely to be the supplier for the smaller 5.5" 1080x2160 display used in the Pixel 3.

Sony's latest flagship phone, the Xperia XZ3, will ship in September 24 in the US for $900 - and you can pre-order it now at Amazon.com. This is the single-SIM edition. In the UK, the XZ3 will ship in October 2018 for £699.

The Xperia XZ3 is a high-end smartphone that features a curved 6" QHD+ 1440x2880 (537 PPI) LG pOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset, 4 GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, microSD slot, Dual-SIM (optional) and a 19Mp 4K HDR camera.

In January 2018 it was reported that LG Display is in the final stages of its discussions with Apple, and the Korean OLED maker expects to supply 15-16 million flexible OLEDs to Apple in 2018 (LGD will supply Apple with 6.5" AMOLEDs for its 2018 large iPhone OLED variant).

The Wall Street Journal now reports that LG Display may not be ready to produce these OLED displays in time for Apple - who may once again rely on Samsung Display to produce all of its OLED iPhone displays in 2018.