Competing technologies - Page 4

DSCC says that in 2022, MiniLEDs will hold a 49% share in the advanced notebook market, while OLED will hold a 51% share. Looking into the future,MiniLEDs sales will increase slightly, while OLED sales will rise much faster, and by 2026 OLED shipments to the notebook market will reach over 40 million panels, and hold a 75% market share.

Looking at specific vendors, DSCC sees Asus as the leading OLED notebook maker, with a market share of 55%, followed by Lenovo at 17% and both Samsung and HP at 11%. The market ranking will remain pretty constant in 2022 as a whole.

According to reports from Korea, Samsung Display has decided to shut down all of its remaining LCD production line next month (June 2022).

SDC has actually made the decision to quit the LCD market back in 2020, but this decision was reversed as demand for LCD displays increased following the COVID pandemic. In recent months the price of LCD panels have dropped sharply to an all time low.

Japan Display (JDI) announced that it has developed a new OLED deposition technology, which they refer to as eLEAP, that is cost effective and can be used to create OLEDs that are brighter, more efficient, and longer lasting compared to OLEDs produced using mask evaporation (FMM). eLEAP also enables OLED freeform deposition. JDI regards its new technology as a " historic breakthrough in display technology".

eLEAP is based on a lithographic method, and does not require any masks. The main advantage seems to be that OLED displays produced by eLEAP technology can achieve an aperture ratio of 60%, compared with FMM OLEDs which achieve a ratio of about 28%. This means that the OLED displays can be driven at lower currents - which extends the lifetime, improves the efficiency and also enables higher-peak brightness when needed.

LG Display says that according to an original research it has conducted, OLED is the optical gaming display technology.

In this research, several gamers played different gaming genres on LCD and OLED displays, and on curved and flat displays. The study results show that a gamer’s reaction time can be improved by using OLED, while a display’s curvature provides a more immersive gaming experience.

Samsung Display announced that its OLED displays for laptop applications has received 'Halo Free' verification from the safety science leader, UL, for its glare-free and sharp picture quality.

Samsung explains that LCD displays suffer from light-blurring which occurs when the outline of a bright subject appears white on an image with sharp contrast. This is because even with local dimming, LCDs cannot adjust the backlight brightness exactly on the edge. OLEDs, with their self-lit pixels, do not suffer from this.

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Reports suggest that Meta (Facebook) is developing two new VR headsets, with very different display technologies - one with mini-LED displays, and the other with OLED microdisplays (as we reported in August 2021).

The Oculus Quest Pro (codenamed Cambria) will be based on mini-LED displays, . Meta aims to launch the Quest Pro in the summer of 2022 and hopes to sell 3 million headsets by the end of the year.

DSCC posted an interesting article, comparing the production costs of OLED vs mini-LED panels for IT. DSCC estimates that for tablets and notebooks, a tandem structure will be used, and the panels will be based on rigid substrates.

In the chart above you see a production cost comparison, between 2021 and 2025, for 12.9" panels. DSCC looks at two OLED production options: a tandem OLED panel with an LTPO backplane produced in a 6-Gen fab, and a similar panel that uses an Oxide-TFT backplane and produced in a larger 8.5-Gen fab. As you can see, OLED panels are more cost effective, and will remain so throughout the forecast period.

In the last couple of years, we have seen OLED displays starting to be adopted in high-end laptop devices, and recently prices of OLED laptop panels have dropped and more mid-range laptops have opted for OLED displays (usually as an optional upgrade over an IPS LCD).

I recently bought a new laptop, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro OLED, with a 14-inch 2880x1800 (2.8K) 90Hz AMOLED display. The screen, as expected from an OLED, looks brilliant. Some people are still concerned about OLED in laptops, though. Some worry that the display might suffer from burn-in.

MicroLED displays are exciting to many, as the technology seems to be the front runner for the next-generation display of choice in many market segments - from AR/VR glasses through wearables to TVs and IT displays.

The MicroLED industry though, even after billions of dollars spent on R&D, is still at a very early stage. Production costs are high, processes are not reliable enough, and there are several technical challenges to overcome before production can begin (except for some niche areas such as ultra large-size premium TVs).