Competing technologies - Page 30

LG Display released an interesting press release today in which they re-affirm their commitment to OLED as the future display technology: "What is crystal clear, is that LG Display, from the beginning, has made a commitment to fulfilling the potential of OLED and stayed true to it".

LG says that "certain industry players" (i.e. Samsung. They won't say it per se, but they did link to Samsung related news) are sending different messages and causing confusion: they continue to tout OLED and release new products but they also "downplay their once strong commitment".

Two days ago we reported on new rumors from Korea saying that Samsung will have to use IPS-LCD displays in about 10% of the Note 3 phones due to expected AMOLED production shortages. Today MT Media (a Korean publication) posted an "Exclusive" article in which they say that Samsung will in fact use a plastic-based unbreakable 5.99" YOUM OLED display in the Note 3.

YOUM phone prototype, CES 2013

This coincides with the OLED Association claim back in April that the Note 3 phone will use a YOUM display. Samsung's YOUM capacity (especially for these relatively large 5.99" panels) will be quite limited at first, but it seems that Samsung really has to innovate in their new phones. The GS4 is a great phone with a terrific display, but it isn't really innovative in hardware or design (and some suggest that sales aren't as good as Samsung hoped for).

A new report from Korea suggests that Samsung will use IPS-LCD displays in some Note 3 models. The Korean company aims to have about 10% of the Note 3 phones use LCD displays. The rest will use Super AMOLED displays. Apparently Samsung will buy those LCD displays from Sharp (Samsung owns about 3% of the troubled display maker following a recent investment).

Galaxy Note II

The main reason the report gives for this decision is that Samsung may have an AMOLED supply issue. Earlier this month DisplaySearch estimated that AMOLED supply/demand ratio will fall to 1% in Q4 2013 - basically saying that supply will be very tight with a good chance shortages. So perhaps Samsung is working on a backup plan by designing models with LCDs instead of AMOLEDs.

Samsung announced the new Galaxy S4 Active phone - that is water and dust proof (it can be submerged in up to three feet of water for up to 30 minutes). The display is a 5" Full-HD (443 ppi) panel - but it is an LCD and not an OLED like in the regular GS4.

The S4 Active has a 1.9Ghz quad-cre CPU, LTE, 8mp camera and Android 4.2.2. It will launch in the UK and the US during the summer.

IDTechEx released a new OLED lighting report (OLED vs LED lighting 2013-2023) in which they analyze the OLED lighting market, and compare it to the LED market. The company says that in the "most likely" scenario, the OLED market will grow to $1.3 billion in 2023.

According to IDTechEx, there are two main issues with OLEDs. First of all the performance: LEDs last much longer (typically 50,000 hours compared to 5,000-15,000 in current OLED panels) and they are more efficient (90-100 lm/W compared to OLED lighting which is currently at 20-50 lm/W). Personally I think this gap will close in time. LG Chem for example are expected to release new panels in July 2013 which will feature 80 lm/W and 20,000 hours (LT70).

Back in May 2012, 3M teamed up with Nanosys to commercialize QDEF Quantum Dot films for LCD displays. Today 3M announced that it is in the "final stages of scale-up" for these QDEF films. They plan to offer these to LCD makers that can be use them to make phones, tablets and TVs lighter, brighter, more energy efficient and with a larger color gamut. 

In January 2013 Sony unveiled some new LED-backlit LCD TVs under the Triluminos brand, which use QDvision's quantum dot films. This TVs (and smaller sized LCDs in one of Sony's digital cameras) are already shipping.

Update: turns out that I was wrong and Samsung did develop an OLED microdisplay, an XGA one back in 2011

The Korea Times claims that Google's next gen Google Glass HMD (or "wearable computer") will use OLED microdisplays made by Samsung Display. Or at least SDC made a proposal for Google to replace the current LCoS panels by its OLED displays. The current Google Glass prototypes use Himax' LCoS displays.

At SID 2013, SDC's CEO did mention OLED microdisplays on silicon during his keynote speech. He also says that these kinds of displays may be used for augmented-reality devices such as Google Glass. Last month Google's CEO Larry Page visited Samsung's OLED facilities, and apparently Page is "interested in Samsung's OLED business". So now the rumors are that Google are interested in small sized OLED displays.

Last year Qualcomm announced that they no longer plan to mass produce Mirasol displays, but during SID they unveiled their latest panels, and obviously they are still developing the technology. The company's latest panels feature a very high pixel density (557 PPI). The 5.1" panel has a resolution of 2560x1440 while the 1.5" panel's resolution is 600x600:

Mirasol displays are very power efficient (they draw about a sixth of the power required by a similar OLED or LCD panel). On the other hand, the color reproduction isn't up to par with LCDs or OLEDs. Still this is an interesting technology to watch.

Amazon announced that it bought Samsung's Electrowetting display unit (formerly LiquaVista). The sum was undisclosed, but it probably was not a large sum (reportedly Samsung wanted to sell it for less than $100 million).

Compared to E Ink panels, Electrowetting displays can feature brighter color and much faster refresh rates, while still being very low on power. On the other hand the display technology hasn't been commercialized yet. Which makes the Amazon purchase a bit puzzling (after all Amazon is not a display maker and not an IP company). Perhaps Amazon hopes this kind of technology may enable them to build a unique e-reader/tablet hybrid device?

E Ink announced that it will begin to produce 13.3" 1200x1600 plastic-based flexible E Ink panels (called Mobius) in 2013. Those Mobius panels weigh just 60 grams and will be much more rugged compared to the company's glass based panels. The panels use Sony's flexible TFT technologies (that were transferred to E Ink for the production).

Sony already unveiled a prototype tablet that will uses those displays. This tablet is aimed towards the educational market and Sony hopes to launch it by March 2014. The prototype device uses a touch display (with stylus support), 4GB of memory (with microSD) and Wi-Fi. The whole device is just 6.8 mm thick and weighs just 385 grams.