Competing technologies - Page 26

LG Display reported their financial results for Q1 2014 ($5.3 billion revenues, $90 million operating profit, $80 million net loss) and the company commented that the company still expects the new Gen-8 M2 OLED fab to start production in the second half of 2014 as planned. When the M2 fab will become online, LG Display aims to expand the OLED TV product line-up and will also expand the customer base (currently the company provides OLED TV panels to LG Electronics and Skyworth).

LG Display commented that the LCD industry entered the "slow growth phase", and so going forward, the company will convert existing LCD lines for LTPS and OLED production rather than building new fabs. LGD also says they want to expand their flexible OLED business - although they did not detail what they mean exactly beside saying that they will extend their Plastic OLED product lineup.

Last month Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S5 with its 5.1" FHD (432 PPI) Super AMOLED display. The phone is set to launch globally on April 11th, but my friend Raymond Soneira from DisplayMate received a GS5 from Samsung to test the display. And his conclusions? The GS5's display is a major improvement over the GS4 display. In fact, the GS5's AMOLED is the best mobile display ever tested at DisplayMate, outperforming all other OLED and LCD displays.

But just how is the display better than the 5" Full-HD one on the GS4 and every other mobile display on the market? DisplayMate says that the new display is features the highest brightness, the lowest reflectance, the highest color accuracy, the highest contrast rating in ambient light and the smallest brightness variation with viewing angle. That's quite impressive!

In August 2013, DisplaySearch said that AMOLED technology is expected to take the revenue lead in the mobile phone display market. The company now released their new worldwide FPD shipment forecasts, and they say that actually LTPS LCD had the largest revenue share in 2013 (37%) followed closely by AMOLED (35%).

Interestingly, the company sees LTPS LCDs to grow in popularity as requirements for higher resolution and longer battery life will drive the growth. Those LTPS LCDs will grab 51% of the market by 2020. It's one of the first time I see a market research saying that AMOLED mobile phone displays wil stop growing in the future - and even decline in market share.

Sharp was showing their 7" MEMS displays at CES 2014, promising MEMS based tablets on the market within six months. Those same prototypes were unveiled a few months ago at Ceatec 2013 in Japan. MEMS-Shutter displays are similar to LCD in that they have a LED backlighting unit (BLU), color filters, and a component that blocks the light. But instead of liquid-crystals and polarizers, these displays use MEMS shutters.

Sharp's 7" prototypes feature a resolution of 1280x768 and are made on IGZO substrates. Sharp claims that MEMS displays will feature ultra-low power consumption but will yet offer excellent image quality and color - in fact Sharp says the color gamut is better compared to 'standard' LCDs. Sharp sees these displays competing with OLEDs, but they will be a lot cheaper.

We heard several reports from Korea that Samsung is set to unveil AMOLED tablets at CES. Samsung indeed release several new tablets at CES, but all of them use LCD displays. The main new family of tablets is the Galaxy Tab Pro, which comes in 12.2", 10.1" and 8.4" sizes - and all use 2560x1600 LCDs.

So far Samsung is disappointing us at CES - there's no new OLED products on display. Hopefully previous reports that the company is shifting its focus back to LCD to lower costs aren't true. We still know that SDC regards OLEDs as the future display for premium devices. Perhaps they are indeed shifting their OLED focus to flexible displays.

A new week is starting, and the rumor mill regarding Samsung's upcoming GS5 flagship smartphone's display is not stopping. The latest reports from China suggest that Samsung Display is experiencing difficulties in producing those 5.25" WQHD (560 PPI) AMOLED panels required for the GS5. Samsung may choose to adopt Sharp's 5.25" 2K Ultra HD 560 ppi LTPS LCDs.

While Samsung holds a 3% stake in Sharp, it seems highly unlikely for the company to buy displays from Sharp and not from its own display maker. We heard that SDC already started producing those 5.25" AMOLEDs, and there are also reports that the company is increasing OLED production capacity to meet demand in 2014 (from both phones and tablets).

In June 2012, Sony and Panasonic announced that two companies will jointly develop technologies for OLED TV panels mass production. Now the two Japanese companies announced that they canceled the joint development. The two companies will continue to develop OLED technologies independently, but will focus on UHD LCDs. Sony and Panasonic explains tha OLED TVs did "not deliver the growth originally envisioned, and are unlikely to be commercially viable in the near future.

Sony 56-inch 4K OLED TV prototype

In January 2013 (during last year's CES event), the two companies unveiled 56" 4K OLED TV prototypes. The Oxide-TFT substrate was produced by AUO. We know that Panasonic used an ink-jet printing process, Sumitomo's PLED materials and a direct-emission architecture. Sony used their own Super Top Emission OLED technology and evaporable OLED materials.

According to Business Korea, Samsung Electronics is going to focus on mid-market LCD handsets in 2014, and in an effort to bring costs down they will adopt LCD panels in more phones. Samsung Display will reduce AMOLED production and increase LCD panel production. SDC was also asked to reduce OLED prices by "at least 10%".

The article says that the high-end smartphone market is saturated and Samsung wants to focus on emerging markets such as India and China. This can be a disturbing report for the OLED industry, but it doesn't have to be so. Samsung made it clear several times that it sees OLED as the future display technology, and it plans to adopt OLEDs in its high-end devices. It is putting a special emphasis on flexible displays - and in fact it sees flexible OLEDs adopted by 40% of their mobile phones by 2018.

Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy S5 in a few months, and there are many rumors regarding this upcoming phone. The latest report from Korea says that SDC started producing 5.25" WQHD (2560x1440, 560 PPI) AMOLED panels that will be used in the GS5. The display uses the same Diamond Pixel arrangement as in the GS4.

Earlier rumors suggested that Samsung will adopt a flexible YOUM OLED for a premium version of the GS5. As a reminder, the flexible OLED in the Galaxy Round (which can be considered a Note 3 variant) is not a YOUM display as it is uses a glass cover.

Sharp developed a new LCD backlighting unit (BLU) that improves the displays color gamut. The new BLU enables a 90% NTSC color gamut - without sacrificing the brightness. The new BLU is based on a blue LED with new green and blue phosphors. Below you can see an LCD with the new BLU (right) next to a conventional Sharp LCD.

Sharp usually uses a BLU made of blue LED and yellow phosphors, which achieves 72% NTSC color gamut. Some of Sharp's LCD use a blue LED and red and green phosphors to achieve 83% NTSC gamut, but this lowers the brightness by 20%.