Competing technologies - Page 17

Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) released a new free white paper (sponsored by Nanosys, a quantum-dot producer) in which it analyses the premium TV market and compares the future of OLED TV to that of QD-LCD TVs.

According to DSCC, the total TV market will grow from 261 million units in 2016 to 282 million in 2021 - a slow CAGR of 1.6". The OLED TV market will grow at a rapid rate of 50% - from 0.9 million panels in 2016 to 6.8 million in 2021. Even at this fast growth rate, OLEDs will represent only 2.4% of the total TV market in 2021. The main constraints towards faster OLED TV growth, according to DSCC, will be production capacity and not demand.

StoreDot was established in 2011, to commercialize bio-organic quantum dots based on a process developed at Tel Aviv University. The company's first product was to be a memory device - hence the name StoreDot. In 2013 I visited the company in its Ramat Gan office to report on its quantum dot advances for display applications.

Since 2013, a lot has happened at StoreDot. The company changed its direction and is now focused on a new organic-material synthesis method that enabled it to develop nanomaterials that exhibit quantum dot like performance but that are not actually quantum dots. The company is now targeting two applications - fast charging batteries and displays. StoreDot has moved to large offices in Herzelia, has now over 60 employees and raised over $60 million dollars (led by Samsung Ventures). The one thing that did not change is the name - even though the company is neither into memory devices nor quantum dots anymore...

Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan developed a super flexible organic liquid crystal device, which they say are promising for next-generation highly-flexible LCD displays. The new device is formed from ultra-thin plastic (polyimide) substrates that are firmly bonded by polymer wall spacers.

The transparent polyimide substrate (made by Mitsui Chemicals) are about 10 um thick each, and feature heat resistance and the ability to form fine pixel structures, including transparent electrodes and color filters. The refractive index anisotropy is extremely small, making wide viewing angles and high contrast ratio possible.

UBI Research is seeing increasing demand for OLED in smartphones - especially for flexible OLEDs. The market analysts at UBI estimate that the market share of OLED technologies in the smartphone display market will rise from 16% to over 62% in 2016.

UBI sees most investments in OLED capacity increase in the future going into flexible OLEDs - and by 2021 flexible OLEDs panels will represent about 70% of the total smartphone display OLED market.

Panasonic announced that it has developed a new IPS LCD panel that achieves a high-contrast ratio of over 1,000,000:1, 600 times better than conventional LCDs. panasonic developed new light modulating cells that permit pixel-by-pixel control of backlight intensity.

Panasonic says that these new displays will be suitable for high-end monitors for broadcasting, video production, medical, automotive, and other fields. The company will start shipping samples in January 2017, produced at the company's 8.5-Gen production lines that are capable of manufacturing 10- to 100-inch products.

Nanoco, a UK-based cadmium-free quantum-dot developer, announced that it acquired a group of QD patents from Kodak. These patents are connected to the use of quantum dots in Q-LED displays.

Q-LED displays are emissive displays, similar to OLEDs, but ones that use QDs as the emitting materials. These displays make use of the dots electroluminescent, as opposed to current QD-LCD displays that use the dots photoluminescent to enhance the color gamut and efficiency of LED-based LCDs.

Yole Developpement released a new report covering the OTFT market for flexible displays and other applications. According to Yole, some display makers in Taiwan and China are currently in the process of industrializing OTFT-based displays - flexible LCDs at first, with flexible OLEDs coming within 2-3 years.

The mobility of OTFTs are already high enough for LCDs (higher than a-Si) - but still not enough for OLEDs. But in 2-3 years this should be resolved, with low-performance (200 PPI) OLED displays for wearables, some consumer applications and embedded automotive OLEDs possible within 2-3 years.

Japan Display developed a new foldable device concept that uses two thin-bezel LCD displays. JDI is working with a Chinese smartphone maker to introduce such a device in the summer of 2017.

To create those thin-bezel displays, JDI collaborated with Minebea and other companies to use a specially designed backlight and LCD panel.The frame is less than 1mm wide, which means that the gap between the two displays is less than 2mm.

According to our (unverified) source, Samsung is set to acquire quantum dots developer QDVision for $70 million. Samsung is accelerating its quantum dot technology development, and according to some reports aims to produce QLED TVs by 2019.

It seems a rather low price for QD Vision - our source says that the company is low on cash, although QDV did raise $22 million exactly a year ago. QDVision also announced a new joint-development agreement with BASF for a QD-enhanced backlight and color filter for LCD displays.

Japan Display (JDI) announced it is cutting 4,700 jobs (about 30% of its workforce) to improve profitability, but also said that it is seeing strong demand for its LCD screens from Chinese phone makers.

JDI says that these phone makers are switching from OLED displays back to LCD ones. JDI explains that its LCD panels have "caught up with OLED rivals in thinness and power efficiency" and so phone makers are now beginning to have "doubts about the future of OLEDs".