Samsung Display - Page 47

Samsung Electronics announced that it expects its first quarter earnings to be below market expectations - due to weakness in its display and memory businesses.

Samsung says that LCD prices have dropped more than expected and demand for its flexible OLED also declined. Analysts from Susquehanna Financial Group estimate that a weak smartphone market and a "dramatic" decline of Apple iPhone OLED orders caused Samsung Display's revenue to decline around 50% compared to Q4 2018.

A report from China suggests that Samsung sold over 500,000 units of its new flagship Galaxy S10 smartphones in China in only 7 days. it tok 30 days to achieve the same number of sales for Samsung's GS9 smartphone in 2018. Within two weeks of its launch, the GS10 is sold out in Hong Kong.

Reviews on Samsung's GS10 has been very positive, and Samsung expects to sell 40-45 million units in 2019.

CLSA estimates that Samsung's OLED shipments have declined 26% in Q1 2019 (compared to Q4 2018), as global handset shipments remain weak (especially in China) and shipments to Apple declined 60%.

CLSA says that SDC will post a 500 billion Won ($440 million USD) loss, compared to a 500 billion Won profit in Q4 2018 - due to the low OLED shipments, losses at the LCD business as panel prices fell 7% in the quarter and as the company finally started to recognize depreciation of its A4 OLED fab.

In February 2019 Samsung Display started production its new 15.6" UHD (3840x2160) OLED laptop display panels. SDC is targeting premium laptops, as these ultra high resolution panels are optimized for gaming, graphic design and video streaming.

Samsung already signed up a few customers - including HP with its Spectre x360, Lenovo with the Yoga C730 and Dell with the XPS 15, Dell G7 15 and the Alienware m15. According to a new report from Taiwan's Digitimes, Samsung is aggressively seeking new customers for its OLED laptop displays - and the company has pricing its 15.6" OLEDs at only $50-60 above comparable LCD displays.

Huawei adopted AMOLED displays in its P20 and P20 Pro smartphones, using panels produced by both BOE and LG Display. According to reports from China, the smartphone maker decided to adopt SDC's AMOLEDs in its updated smartphones, the P30 and P30 pro which will be launched soon.

We already reported that Samsung aims to increase its OLED production and to be more aggressive with its pricing. It seems as if this effort bears fruit. In addition it could be that Huawei was not satisfied with some of the LGD display quality issues being reported by P20 users.

Last month Samsung unveiled its first foldable OLED device, the Galaxy Fold - with its inside-folding 7.3" 1536 x 2152 Infinity Flex AMOLED display. The GFold is not shipping yet - but according to Bloomberg, Samsung is already developing two more foldable devices.

One of the two devices will look like a clamshell phone (an inside-folding OLED, but with a different form factor) - and the second will fold outside, in a similar fashion to Huawei's Mate X. The clamshell phone will be unveiled towards the end of 2019, or early in 2019. The out-folding device seems to be closer to commercialization and Samsung has already produced prototypes as it considered using this design in the first generation Galaxy Fold.

ETNews reports that BOE has developed a new technology that integrates a touch layer inside a flexible OLED display (on touch) - a similar technology to Samsung's Y-OCTA. BOE is reportedly aiming to integrate the technology to its B11 production line in Miyangyang.

Y-OCTA panels are thinner than Samsung's previous flexible Add-On Touch panels - and the optical features are also better as the touch layer is below the polarizer. Samsung estimates that Y-OCTA also cuts production costs by around 30%.

In October 2018, during the company's OLED Forum in china, Samsung detailed its future OLED technology roadmap, highlighting its sensor integration technologies. Samsung's vision includes putting a fingerprint sensor, a camera, speaker (Sound on Display) and also Haptic capabilities - all under or inside the OLED display.

In the Galaxy S10, Samsung drilled a small hole in the AMOLED display around the camera module. This is quite an achievement, and Samsung's Mobile Communication VP Yang Byung-duk now ways that the company aims to develop a full-screen smartphone display that will put the camera under the OLED without a hole. Byung-duk says that this is a challenging technology - and it will take at least 3 years to develop.

DisplayMate posted an extensive review of the new Samsung Galaxy S10 display - the 6.1" 3040x1440 (550 PPI) flexible AMOLED. SDC's AMOLEDs are excellent displays - and it is not a surprise that DisplateMate found this newest AMOLED to be the best mobile display it ever tested.

DisplayMate says that the new GS10 display outperforms SDC's previous AMOLED models used in the iPhone XS and the Galaxy S9 and Note 9. This year, Samsung concentrated on increasing the picture quality and color accuracy by implementing precision factory display calibration. The Galaxy S10 is the most color-accurate display that DisplayMate have ever tested.

Korea's ETNews reports that Samsung has shipped foldable OLED display samples to both Apple And Google. According to the report, the displays sent to Apple were 7.2" in size (just slightly smaller than the Galaxy Fold OLED display).

This is hardly a surprise - it's highly likely that all smartphone brands are now looking into foldable displays for next generation devices - and all leading brands are also likely to want to design prototypes and start looking at displays.