Samsung Display - Page 64

Google's VR vice president, Clay Bavor, revealed that Google has partnered with "one of the leading OLED makers" on a secret project to develop a high-end VR display. The OLED display will support a resolution of 20 million pixels per eye.

This is a very high resolution - a 4K display has 8.3 million pixels, so it means 2.5X the number of pixels in a 4K display. It terms of display density (which depends on the panel size of course, which we assume to be around 3.5"), this could be around 1,800 PPI.

Last Month Hyuandai's premium sub-brand Genesis unveiled a concept car, the GV80 SUV, that featured a long curved OLED display - 22" in size, which we assumed was supplied by SDC. The Korea Herald reports today that Samsung is in talks with Genesis to supply OLED panels for its automobiles.

It's not clear if this first deal involves flexible OLEDs as was demonstrated in the GV80 or whether it will involve regular rigid OLEDs. The Korea Herald reports that Samsung is strongly pushing for a comeback into the automotive market with a range of technologies including displays, batteries and even the Tizen OS.

According to the Korea Herald, Samsung Display has signed an agreement with Apple to supply flexible OLEDs for Apple's iPhone 9, due out in late 2018. The Korea Herald says that Apple will launch two iPhone 9 OLED models - with display sizes of 5.28" and 6.46". Of course the final display size is subject to change as the design of the iPhone 9 is not final yet.

SDC's total OLED shipments to Apple in 2018 will reach 180 million units, and Samsung will dedicate one of its upcoming flexible OLED fabs exclusively for Apple's displays.

Samsung Display is set to demonstrate a 9.1-inch stretchable AMOLED prototype during SID 2017. This display can stretch up to 12 mm when pressed, and still maintain its high resolution (which SDC did not specify).

This is an exciting development - but we're all waiting for Samsung to first commercialize its foldable OLEDs, and only then can we expect to see commercial rollable and stretchable displays.

Corning announced that Samsung Display is using the company's Lotus NXT glass as the carrier glass in its latest flexible OLED panels, including those that are used in the Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones. Both these new flagship phones also adopt Corning's Gorilla Glass 5 cover glass.

Samsung Display is producing its flexible OLEDs on a flexible polyimide substrate, and the Lotus NXT glass is used as a carrier glass during production (it is removed at the end of the process).

Last month we reported that Korean press ran stories that Samsung has started construction of its A4 flexible OLED fab. The A4 was said to be Samsung's first 7-Gen fab (although some other reports claimed it will be a 6-Gen fab) and to have a huge capacity of 135,000 monthly substrate.

The Korea Herald today reports that Samsung Display denies that it has started construction of a new OLED fab. Samsung says that the company did level the ground in an area adjacent to its existing manufacturing site in Asan, but it has not yet decided on what to do with the land.

According to an industry insider in Taiwan, Samsung is set to acquire Taiwan's PlayNitride for the company's micro-LED technology for around $150 million. Our inside says that Samsung aims to develop micro-LED based displays for VR applications, but may also look into micro-LED based TVs using PlayNitride's technology.

Micro-LED is a promising display technology as it has the potential to enable brighter and more efficient displays compared to OLEDs. It also may be cheaper, but there are still technical challenges to overcome and analysts estimate that micro-LEDs will not be commercialized before 2020.

Image retention ("Burn in") is one of the major drawbacks of OLED displays, and a static icon or very consistent displays are always a problem with such displays. When Samsung introduced the Galaxy S8 it implemented a soft home button, which caused some concerns.

PhoneArena confirm that Samsung's home button actually moves around by a few pixels from time to time - obviously to prevent serious image retention. Samsung employed the same trick with its "always on" clock display in previous OLED phones. This is a good way to improve image retention - although it won't solve the problem completely as the icon only moves around by a few pixels each time.

Samsung Electronics announced its financial results for Q1 2017, with the highest quarterly operating profit ($8.75 billion) since 2013 - as Samsung's component business boomed while its mobile phone sales were down.

Samsung Display reports that OLED performance improved compared to both last year and last quarter due to strong demand an increased sales of its new flexible AMOLED displays. Revenue is expected to continue growing in the coming years, mostly due to an increase in flexible OLED supply in the second half ot the year. Samsung is worried however from growing competitiveness for its mid to low-end rigid OLED sales from high-end LTPS LCD panels.