Samsung Display - Page 38

Korean media reports that due to a fire at Samsung's A3 OLED production fab in Asan, the company had to shut down the production at some of the lines. Luckily, there were no casualties.

Samsung Displays says that this won't effect the supply of OLED panels, but the extent of the damage is not yet determined.

Samsung Electronics reported its financial results for Q1 2020. It was a good quarter for Samsung, driven by high demand for its chips - and also its mobile OLED displays. Samsung sales int he first quarter reached $45 billion while its operating profit rose 3.4% from last year to $5.2 billion.

Samsung warns though that its Q2 2020 results will be lower than previously estimated due to the CoronaVirus outbreak. Samsung did not detail its expectations for its display unit in Q2.

Samsung Electronics's 2nd foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z Flip, sports an ultra-thin glass cover, which replaced the polyimide one used in its previous foldable, the Galaxy Fold. The UTG glass cover is produced by Korea-based Dowoo Insys, who processes Schott's ultra thin glass.

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung Electronics wants to develop its own UTG cover, as it feels the Dowoo Insys UTG is still not robust enough and the company also wants to increase production yields and reduce costs. SE is already in talks with several glass suppliers for this project.

Reuters reports that Samsung Display has decided to stop all LCD production by the end of 2020. The company will continue to support it current customers without any issues.

SDC has two LCD production lines in Korea. One of these will be converted to next-generation QD-OLED TV panels (in a $10.8 billion investment announced in October 2019). According to Reuters, the second line will also be converted to QD-OLED in the future. SDC did not yet decide what will it do with its two LCD production lines in China.

Towards the end of 2019 LG Display started to supply Apple with 6.1" film-touch OLED flexible displays for its 2020 iPhone, and IHS Markit now says that these shipments propelled LGD's OLED smartphone market share to 10.8% in Q4 2019 (up from only 2.1% in Q3 2019).

In fact LGD now says that mobile OLED revenues make up for 36% of its total revenues in Q4 - which is higher than its OLED TV revenues for the first time ever.

OLED material developer Cynora recently announced its first commercial product, the cyBlueBooster fluorescent blue emitter that is 15% more efficient that current fluorescent blue emitters on the market.

This was a very interesting announcement, and Cynora's CEO Adam Kablanian was kind enough to answer a few questions we had to help understand the new material and Cynora's current business and latest technology.

Korean ETNews reports that Samsung is expecting higher demand for foldable OLED displays, and the company decided to increase its monthly production capacity from 260,000 units to around 600,000 by the end of May 2020, and over a million displays by the end of the year.

ETNews also reports that Samsung Electronics is planning to launch its third foldable smartphone later in 2020, and Chinese phone makers are also requesting foldable displays from SDC.

Samsung Display announced that it developed a new AMOLED smartphone display, optimized for 5G smartphones, that features a reduction of 15% in its power consumption compared to SDC's previous OLEDs. The new display also features the lowest blue-light emission in the industry - 6.5%.

Samsung did not explain how it managed to achieve the new reduction in power consumption - this is likely to be the result of new OLED materials. Samsung also does not explain how exactly these new OLEDs are optimized for 5G smartphones exactly - except for saying that these new displays are an excellent choice due to their high image quality, low power consumption and eye-protective functionality (low blue light).

Earlier this month Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Flip, its 2nd foldable smartphone - and the 6.7" 1080x2636 inward foldable HDR "Dynamic AMOLED" display uses a flexible glass cover, as opposed to SDC's previous foldable OLEDs that used a flexible polyimide cover.

Samsung now says that it is branding its ultra-thin-glass foldable OLEDs as Samsung UTG. I'm not sure what to say regarding Samsung's slogan "Tough, yet Tender" which seems to be taken out of a completely different industry.

Samsung recently announced its latest flagship phone series, the Galaxy S20. Our display measurement friends from DisplayMate tested the new display - and unsurprisingly it turns out that the new Samsung Display AMOLED displays are very impressive - and they earn DisplayMate's highest ever display performance grade.

DisplayMate tested the Galaxy S20 Ultra, with its 6.9" 1440x3200 (511 PPI), 120Hz, Dynamic AMOLED display. The display has "close to text book perfect" calibration accuracy and its performance is visually indistinguishable from perfect. The new Samsung OLED display is setting or matching 12 smartphone display performance records.