Samsung Display - Page 52

DisplayMate has posted a comprehensive review of the Apple iPhone XS Max display - a 6.5" 1242x2688 AMOLED display. DisplayMate has found that this display is highly impressive - with a close to text-book perfect calibration and performance. The display has been found to be on par with the Galaxy S9 and Note 9 display.

The high performance display led us to ask DisplayMate's Raymond Soneira about the producer of this display - and he confirms our estimation - the iPhone XS Max's display was produced by Samsung Display. In the past months we have heard many reports claiming that Apple contracted LG Display to produce this 6.5" AMOLED, and now we have proof that eventually Apple chose to keep Samsung as its exclusive supplier for Smartphone AMOLEDs, at least for now.

Market research company Newzoo has started to track the OLED smartphone market, and the company's analysts say that over a billion smartphones with OLED displays have been shipped - up from 720 million in July 2016. OLED is the display of choice for high-end smartphones, and OLED displays take up 30.4% of the total smartphone display market (up from 26.2% in June 2016).

Looking at smartphone brands, NewZoo says that Samsung accounts for 70.5% of the market (smartphones with OLED displays, that is) - down from 87% in July 2016. Samsung is followed by Oppo (9%), Vivo (9% as well) and Apple (around 5%).

Samsung launched a new home screen TV range in India, called Active LED (also "LED for Home") - modular LED-based TV tiles that are offered in 4 sizes (from 110-inch FHD to 260-inch UHD). These are likely to be Micro-LED emissive displays (or mini-LEDs, most likely), even though Samsung did not actually give any specifications yet.

The Active LEDs are priced from 10 million Rs (around $137,000) for the 110" to 35 million Rs ($480,000) for the 260-inch TV. As these are modular TVs, consumers can choose different shapes (but only one of the four available resolutions/sizes).

According to reports from Taiwan, Samsung Electronics aims to introduce a 75" Micro-LED TV in 2019. Samsung will adopt PlayNitride's LED chips and technologies (and will also take a 30% stake in the Taiwan-based startup to help it increase its production capacity).

In July 2018, Samsung Electronics video and display chief, Han Jong-hee, said that Samsung aims to release a Micro-LED consumer TV next year - The Wall Luxury that will be based on its Wall modular TV. It could be that this will be the 75" TV that will use PlayNitride's chips.

As expected, Apple launched three new smartphones. The 2018-2019 lineup includes the OLED iPhone XS and XS Max and the iPhone XR which uses an LCD display.

The iPhone XS is the successor to the iPhone X - this phone sports a 5.8-inch 1125x2436 flexible notch-type AMOLED display (produced by Samsung Display), 4GB of RAM and 64/256/512 GB of storage.

Kyulux announced that it has signed joint-development agreements (JDAs) with both LG Display and Samsung Display. The LGD agreement was signed in January 2018 while the SDC one was recently signed. Both agreements focus on deep blue Hyperfluoresence / TADF emitters.

Kyulux hopes that by collaborating with the two leading OLED producers, it will be able to accelerate its material development - and it aims to have commercial red, green and blue HF/TADF emitters ready by mid 2019.

Due to lower demand for flexible (due to several reasons, see here) in late 2017 and early 2018, Samsung's utilization rates at its flexible OLEDs fab were quite low, and its A4 production line was pretty much unused for the time.

But demand for mobile OLED displays is now on the rise, and a report from Korea now suggests that SDC aims to resume flexible OLED production in its A4 line in October 2018 - as the company secured new ordered for smartphone OLEDs from Chinese phone makers.

DisplayMate posted a review of Samsung's latest OLED display - the 6.4" 1440x2960 (516 PPI) flexible Super AMOLED used in the Galaxy Note 9. As we've seen many times before, Samsung managed to significantly improve its OLED quality - and DisplayMate says that this is the best mobile display ever tested.

In the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung concentrated on significantly raising the on-screen absolute picture quality and absolute color accuracy by implementing precision factory display calibration. This could have been a response to the excellent calibration done by Apple in the iPhone X.

The Nikkei Asian Review says that Samsung's OLED shipments to Apple for its iPhone X dropped to only 6 million panels in Q2 2018 (April-June). In Q1 2018, it was estimated that SDC produced almost 20 million panels for Apple. NAR says that SDC expected to ship around 12-15 million panels to Apple's iPhone X in the quarter, so this is a major disappointment for Samsung.

According to this report, the sale's of Apple's iPhone X has been much lower than expected in the past quarter. Apple, however, will reportedly release two new OLED smartphones in 2018 - and in June 2018 DSSC said that SDC's flexible OLED fabs utilization rates have been recovering, as SDC started to produce panels for Apple's 2018 phones, and Samsung's own flagship phones.

Samsung Electronics reported its results for Q2 2018 - revenues reached $52 billion and operating profit grew to $13.3 billion - the lowest growth since Q1 2017 as the company's smartphone sales is under pressure from Chinese phone makers. SDC reports an improved utilization rates at its rigid OLED fabs, but there was a slow demand for flexible OLEDs.

Looking into the second half of the year, Samsung expects increased shipments of flexible OLEDs, while rigid OLEDs will face stronger competition from LCDs. Samsung reitrates its plans to start producing foldable OLEDs by the end of 2018.