Competing technologies - Page 32

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, said that OLED displays aren't good enough for Apple - the colors are too saturated and the screen is not bright enough. "If you ever buy anything online and really want to know what he color is, as many people do, you should really think twice before you depend on the color from an OLED display", says Cook.

Back in September DisplayMate posted an interesting and comprehensive comparison between the iphone 5 IPS-LCD and the Super AMOLED HD display used in the Galaxy S3. Indeed the call Apple's display as the superior display. The color accuracy of Samsung's OLED is something that can be calibrated, and I'm sure that if Apple wanted Samsung could have made a very accurate OLED. DisplayMate does like OLED displays and thinks they have a great future (and they say that LG's OLED TV is the best TV they have ever seen).

There are some new conflicting reports regarding AUO's OLED program. According to Digitimes, AUO is still struggling with technology issues (mostly low yields and costs) - and has only managed to produce 126 PPI displays. It's possible that all through 2013 AUO will only be able to make these low density panels, and so only target the entry-level and mid-range mobile phone markets. According to digitimes high-resolution OLED panel orders will go to Samsung instead. Yields at the AUO line is still low at 30%-40%.

According to Chinese site OLEDW, however, AUO managed to overcome the yield issues (reached 60% yield), and HTC will use AUO's 4.65" OLED panels in their upcoming M7 flagship phone (Digitimes says that HTC decided to use Sharp-made LCD panels instead). These 720p panels will sport a high 317 PPI (this panel was unveiled by AUO back in October 2012). OLEDW claims that HTC requires a monthly supply of 2 million panels, and have reserved the entire line output of AUO's 3.5-Gen Linkou, New Taipei City fab (7,000 substrates a month, which is not enough for 2 million panels actually, so some of OLEDW numbers aren't correct). This was already reported several times in the past.

During CES Sony unveiled some new LED-backlit LCD TVs under the Triluminos brand, which use QDvision's quantum dot films to enhance the color gamut. Apparently the new TV's color gamut is quite close to OLED TVs, although the contrast is not as good. As far as we know these are the first TVs to use Quantum Dots enhancement films.

According to reports, the company no longer develops Q-LED (or QDLED) displays as these panels have been too difficult to produce reliably, and they now focus on the QD films. I interviewed QDVision's CTO and co-founder back in 2009 - and this still gives a good introduction to QDots.

Samsung has officially launched their YOUM flexible OLED technology. While the YOUM brand was shown back in April 2012, it is now officially the name of Samsung's plastic-based flexible OLED panel products. The company didn't reveal any new technical details, nor did they say when they'll start shipping products based on those panels (or ship panels to other customers) - but it seems that they are getting closer and closer to mass production. Personally I think we'll still have to wait a year (at least) for them to overcome all technical issues with production.

While we don't have any interesting facts to tell here, we do have some cool videos - showing a bendable panel and also devices that use curved YOUM displays. One of those devices (shown below) has a 5" curved YOUM panel.

Intel and Plastic Logic have jointly developed a new paper-like tablet prototype (which they call PaperTab). These tablets use Plastic Logic's 10.7" flexible touch E Ink displays and Intel's Core i5 processors. A user can use several PaperTabs devices at the same time, and these can interact between them, as can be seen in the video below:

Roel Vertegaal, a director in Queen's University's human media lab (who's also involved in this projector) estimates that most computers will look and feel like that - within five to ten years. It's likely that the displays will be full-color OLED ones by then, though...

Update: according to Panasonic's 3-year plan unveiled on March 2013, the company will keep making Plasma TVs.

There are reports that Panasonic considers whether to stop plasma R&D by March 2013, and focus on OLED TVs and other display technologies instead. Panasonic will still produce plasma TVs (and industrial-use displays) for the "time being". The main reason for this move is the technological improvements in LCDs in past years.

Sony OLED TV prototype

Back in September 2012 it was reported that Panasonic has taken steps to streamline its R&D and put more focus on OLED TV development, with plans to invest ¥30 billion ($385 million) in a pilot AMOLED production line in Himeji (this was already reported in April).

Back in April we posted about light-emitting electrochemical cells (LEC), a cheaper (but less efficient) flexible alternative to OLED lighting. Today we learned that OSRAM are also actively researching organic LECs (OLECs), and indeed they view them as a mid-term technology (until OLED catches on) for low-cost wide-area luminaires.

OSRAM already produced large (15x14 cm) LEC prototypes on an R&D setup at Augsburg. A conductive polymer layer is initially applied to the supporting plastic foil that was previously provided with a conductive, transparent layer. Following an infrared drying process the light-emitting layer is applied via the same procedure. Electrons from standard metals can then be vapour-deposited. Unlike LEDs and OLEDs the OLEC production process does not need any clean rooms.

KoreaTimes reports that next year Samsung plans to shift more investment from LCD to OLED. According to the article, Samsung Display will invest around 6 trillion won (about $5.58 billion), out of which only 29% in LCDs, and the rest (almost $4 billion) in OLED. That's actually lower than the planned $6 billion OLED investment for 2012 (we're not sure how much was the actual investment in 2012 though).

Samsung will invest in both small/medium OLEDs and large ones (OLED TVs). The same reports suggests that Samsung will announce the Galaxy S4 during the Mobile World Congress in February 2013. They are also working on the Galaxy Note 3 - which will have a 6.3" OLED display. OLED TV sales however, are only expected during late 2013, which is not good news.

Researchers from Wake Forest university in North Carolina have developed new plastic based lighting technology called field-induced polymer electroluminescent (FIPEL). FIPEL panels are made from three layers of light-emitting polymers that can emit light in any color and can be made in any shape. The efficiency is on par with LEDs and they say the lifetime could reach 50,000 hours or so.

The researchers say that the all-plastic FIPEL "lamps" will be cheap and easy to make - and in fact they already found a "corporate partner" that aims to start producing samples in 2013. Obviously actually getting this technology to market will take a lot of time, effort and investment.

Nanosys announced it has raised $15 million (this is the company's sixth financing round) - to expand its QDEF production capacity. Nanosys says that response from manufacturers has been great and demand for their QDEF film (which improves the color performance and efficiency of LCD displays) has grown - so much they will now expand their capacity tenfold, which will make them the largest quantum dot producer in the world.

QDEF films are drop-in films that are placed on a phosphor-less gallium nitride LED backlight. They act like a phosphor - absorbing the blue light from the LED and producing red and green light, which is then combined with the original blue light to generate a high-quality white light. They say that a QDEF-powered BLU is more efficient, too. Back in June I visited Nanosys' booth at SID 2012, you can read more about this interesting technology here.