Samsung Display - Page 31

DSCC says that foldable smartphone shipments will rise sharply starting in August 2021 - and total foldable OLED smartphone shipments in Q4 2021 will be higher than the whole period from Q1 2020 to Q2 2021 - combined.

There are several reasons for this high increase in projected shipments. First of all, Samsung is expected to release several new foldable smartphones in Q3 2021 - three models in fact, including an "aggressively priced" clamshell foldable.

Ireland-based OLED IP company Solas OLED announced that a jury in the US district court in Texas has found Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics liable to Solas for wilfully infringing two fundamental OLED patents (USPTO #7,446,338 and #9,256,311). The jury awarded solas with $62.7 million in damages.

Solas says that these patents are required for AMOLED to function - these patents were used in the OLED displays used in Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy Note smartphones.

Ireland-based OLED IP company Solas OLED announced that it has filed a new patent infringement lawsuit in Germany against Samsung Electronics.

Solas did not disclose the exact patents related to this lawsuit, but the company says its patent portfolio "covers all critical areas of OLED structures, display design and architecture, and driver circuitry", and that Samsung is using the company's inventions in various devices, such as smartphones, watches and tablets.

Korea's The Elec says that it has learned that Samsung display is developing in-folding OLED displays for Google, Xiaomi and Oppo.

Xiaomi, who has in the past shown prototypes that use Visionox out-folding displays, is now aiming to adopt an SDC in-folding display - 8.03" in size. The Elec says that the same phone will use a large 6.38-inch external display, which will be produced by both SDC CSoT.

In 2019, Doosan Corp spun-off its OLED materials unit, which is now called Doosan Solus (and is listed on the Korean stock market). The company's main OLED products are host materials and EIL and ETL layers.

According to The Elec in Korea, Doosan Solus currently produces so called "advanced" Electron Transporting Layer (aETL) for SDC's mobile AMOLED stack, and the company is now developing specialized aETL to be adopted by Samsung in its QD-OLED stack. Solus has been the exclusive supplier of ETL mateirals for SDC for the past eight years, and its materials are adopted in Samsung's latest M11 AMOLED stack.

Market research company Omdia estimates that LG Display held a 92.5% share in the automotive AMOLED panel market in 2020, in terms of sales. Samsung Displays accounted for 6.9% and BOE 0.6%.

LG 12.8-inch P-OLED in Mercedes Benz 2021 S-Class

OMDIA estimates that the total AMOLED automotive market in 2020 was 240,000 units, and says that the market will experience a fast growth of 60% CAGR to reach 4.4 million units in 2025.

According to a new report from Korea, two SDC researchers were convicted of handing over OLED technology to other companies, and are being sent to prison for two years. Representative and directors of the company that bought the technology was also sent to prison and the company was fined.

The technology in question relates to Optical Adhesive Materials used in OLED production processes. The arrest of these employees was reported in August 2020.

In 2019 Samsung Display formally announced its decision to invest $10.85 billion in QD-OLED TV R&D and production lines. The company is already starting to produce prototypes, and is on track to start mass production in Q3 2021. Reports in 2020 suggested that Samsung Electronics was hesitant about the adoption of QD-OLED panels.

This may have changed now, as we hear that Samsung Electronics has decided to cooperate with SDC and release its first QD-OLED TV next year (2022).

DSCC posted an interesting post with its latest views and forecasts on the OLED material market. The company expects AMOLED stack material sales to grow at a 18% CAGR in the next five years, from $294 million in 2019 to $2.46 billion in 2024. Compared to its previous estimate, DSCC sees higher sales as demand for OLED TVs and OLEDs in the IT market (tablets and notebooks) is increasing.

DSCC also posted an analysis of LGD's new evo OLED material stack. Compared to LGD's "standard" WOLED stack, the evo adds an emitting green layer to improve the brightness by 20%. This of course adds an extra material cost to the panel price.

Samsung Display announced that its Galaxy S21 Ultra is the first device to adopt its updated M11 OLED material stack that uses new materials to increase the efficiency by 16%. Samsung now announced that its updated OLEDs has received the Sunlight Visibility verification from Underwriters Laboratories (UL).

UL’s test showed that the OLED panel scored 73% in DCI-P3 ambient color gamut and has peak brightness of 1,500 nits (compared to 1,300 nits achieved by Samsung's previous M10 OLED stack). Samsung Display says that its own internal testing show that color gamut in bright environment dropped from 99% to 73% , compared to a drop from 78% to 30% in competing LCD displays.