Royole

In 2022, we reported that US- and China-based Royole is in financial problems. The company did not manage to raise funds, and started laying-off many of its employees, following several months it did not pay any wages.

It turns out, that Royole's problems aren't over - even though it seems the company is no longer in business. The company did not pay past wages for many of its employees - some of whom (including guards and production line workers) have 12 months of wages due. Yesterday 50 employees held a demonstration, demanding their wages.

The story of Royole financial situation continues to unfold. Last month we updated that Royole is in financial problems, and that it needs a new injection of cash in order to continue its operation.

We reported that Royole started to pay salaries for employees (after it did not pay for over 5 months), but according to a new update the company has started to lay off a large number of its employees in several departments, including sales, marketing, product development and more. In some departments, over 50% of the employees have received notices. It is understood that the compensation package for these employees is low.

Last month we updated that Royole is in financial problems, and that it needs a new injection of cash in order to continue its operation. A new update from China suggests that some employees did not get paid for over 5 months. This has changed in the past week, and Royole is now paying the salaries.

But Royole's financial woes are likely not over. According to this new report, from 2017 to 2020, the company's revenues amounted to only $77 million, while its loss reached almost $500 million. The report also detailed Royole production: 7,748 units in 2018, 314,000 units in 2019 and 48,600 in the first half of 2020. Actual shipments were much lower.

According to reports in China, Royole did not yet manage to obtain enough customers for its flexible OLED displays to fund its business, and the company requires a new injection of cash in order to continue its operation.

Royole has started mass producing flexible OLED displays back in 2018 at its Quasi 6-Gen fab in Shenzhen, and has since announced plans to build a new fab in Qingdao. Royole developed innovative OLED technologies and devices, and demonstrated several innovative displays, but it seemed it did not manage to find large actual customers for its displays.

Airbus and Royole teamed up to demonstrate a digital inflight magazine - that makes use of a thin flexible OLED panel.

The two companies have been working together since 2018, and are now presenting a prototype device. The device looks like an iPad, but feels like a flexible magazine. The OLED display looks better than currently-used LCD displays in airplane seats, and also consumes less power and are also lighter.

Flexible OLED producer Royole announced a new development kit, called the Royole RoKit, an open platform for designers to develop products based on flexible electronics. The RoKit is now shipping in the US, Europe, Japan and China.

The RoKit includes a 7.8" 1440x1920 60Hz flexible OLED display with touch input (Cicada Wing foldable OLED), Royole's fully-flexible sensor module, an Android 10 motherboard that includes HDMI to MIPI, Wi-Fi, USB and more and more accessories.

Chinese OLED developer Royole announced that it will establish a 16 billion yuan ($2.4 billion USD) OLED production line in Qingdao, China.

Royole did not provide any details, besides that this production line will be used to make flexible and foldable OLEDs. We do not know yet the timeline, technologies and production capacity at the new line.

Chinese OLED developer Royole announced its next-generation (3rd-Gen) fully flexible OLED displays, which it refers to as "Cicada Wing". Royole says that these new displays deliver significant improvements over its previous generation displays. The new displays have a material stack of over 100 layers.

Cicada Wing displays, compared to Royole's 2nd-Gen flexible OLEDs, offer 5X higher contrast, 50% higher brightness, 20% faster response time and a better color shift. It also offers a low brightness decay (Royole says it is 3.5X better then competing foldable OLEDs).

US and China based Royole launched the world's first foldable OLED device - the FlexPai phone/tablet. The FlexPai has a 7.8" 1920x1440 (308 PPI) AMOLED display, when unfolded, The display folds outwards, and when folded the device has three different displays (front, back and spine).

Royole is now accepting pre-orders for the "Developer Mode" device, starting at $1318 for the 128GB model. The first devices will ship in late December 2018. The company said the device has passed bending, twisting and tension tests over 200,000 times, and the display is much more durable compared to current displays (as it is not covered by glass).

Earlier this month, Royole demonstrated its latest technologies at IFA 2018 - including flexible and foldable AMOLED panels, a large automotive display and a phone/bracelet device made from a foldable OLED. The interesting video below shows these new Royole displays.

Royole's flexible OLED displays are produced at the company's "quasi-G6" (5.5-Gen) OLED production fab in Shenzhen which started production in June 2018. In full capacity, Royole's fab will be able to produce over 50 million flexible OLEDs per year (45,000 monthly substrates).