Competing technologies - Page 33

Update: new reports from Korea suggest that Samsung decided to stick with OLED technology for upcoming Full-HD displays...

ZDNet in Korea reports that Samsung will abandon AMOLED technology in favor of LCD for their next generation flagship phone (which will probably be called the S4). The reason given is that Samsung will have to use Full-HD resolution (to compete with Full-HD phones from LG and HTC) - and 4-5 inch AMOLED panels cannot achieve this resolution yet. ZDNet claims that Samsung is interested in buying these panels from Japan Display.

Hopefully this is not a correct report. Last month it was actually reported that Samsung did manage to achieve 400 ppi in their AMOLED displays, and that they will be able to produce Full-HD AMOLED mobile phone panels. In any case, it's not clear whether such a resolution is actually necessary in such small screens.

DisplaySearch released their 2012-2016 global TV market forecasts. They have reduced OLED TV shipments to just 500 units in 2012 and 50,000 in 2013. Meanwhile, 4K2K LCD TVs are expected to grow from 4,000 units in 2012 to 154,000 in 2013. However, DisplaySearch predicts that OLED TV growth will pickup soon afterwards to reach 9 million units in 2016:

Google unveiled their new tablet (the Nexus 10, made by Samsung) and phone (the Nexus 4, made by LG) - and both use LCDs (yeah, those OLED rumors were incorrect after all). The Nexus 10 uses a 10", 2560x1600 (300 ppi) "True RGB Real Stripe PLS" display (PLS stands for Plane to Line Switching, a Samsung-developed tech which is supposed to be brighter and with better viewing angles than IPS panels).

The Nexus 4 uses a 4.7" 1280x768 IPS display (probably made by LG Display). This is the first Google Nexus phone that does not have an AMOLED display. What a shame.

AUO had to delay AMOLED mass production to 2013, but the company is still developing the technology. Today they unveiled a new 4.65" AMOLED that features 317 ppi (so the resolution is probably around 1280x720). This is quite an improvement over AUO's current 4.3" qHD (257 ppi) panels.

AUO also unveiled some other new technologies today: A 4.46" LCD with the "World's thinnest bezel" at 1mm, New AHVA (Advanced Hyper-Viewing Angle) panel technology and a 10" 2560x1600 IGZO based LCD aimed for tablets that is only 1.5mm thick. This is the size and resolution of Google's upcoming Nexus 10 tablet - and perhaps the new device will use this display and not a Super AMOLED as some leaks suggested. Update: the Nexus 10 is official, and it uses a PLS LCD...

Back in September we posted that AUO managed to achieve 50% yield in its AMOLED fab, and is set to start mass production. Now we hear from AUO's vice president Dagang Wu that the company is still facing technical issues and will have to delay mass production to 2013. Hopefully this means early 2013. AUO is optimistic that AMOLED will start replacing LCDs in mobile phones starting in 2013 (or 2014).

AUO hoped to start AMOLED mass production in Q3 2012 (which was also a delay from the original plan). AUO will make 4.3" qHD panels (257 ppi), and according to some industry insiders AUO already signed up HTC, Asus and possible Sony for those panels.

Korean site MK news reports that Samsung have plans to produce Full-HD AMOLED panels in the first half of 2012. These panels will feature a pixel density of 400 ppi or even more. Just to compare, the highest PPI AMOLED ever made is the one used in Samsung's own Galaxy Nexus (316 ppi: 4.65", 1280x720, with PenTile technology). The S3 has 306 ppi( 4.8" 1280x720, PenTile) and the Note II has only 267 ppi, 5.5" 1280x720 - but without PenTile.

Back in July it was reported that Samsung managed to reach 350 ppi using FMM (Fine Metal Mask) technology. Perhaps they are getting close to commercialize this specific technology (and also increase the resolution even further to 400 ppi).

According to a new report by Markets&Markets the global flexible display market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45% over the next five years to reach over $3.2 billion by 2017.

Market&Markets discuss several flexible display technologies such as LCD, LCoS, e-paper and OLED. They say that flexible OLEDs are the most advanced kind of displays and are considered to be the future mainstream display for a number of consumer products.

In February 2012 ASUS unveiled the Padfone - an Android smartphone with a tablet docking station. The display of the phone was a 4.3" qHD (800x600) Super AMOLED. Yesterday ASUS unveiled the Padfone 2 - and this time the phone uses a 4.7" 720p IPS+ LCD panel. The LCD is made by Sharp and uses their IGZO backplane.

Sharp announced a new mobile phone - the first one with an IGZO Oxide-TFT backplane. The Aquos Zeta SH-02E, bound for NTT DoCoMo will have a 4.9" 1280x720 display. Other features include a quad-core 1.5Ghz CPU, Android 4.0, LTE and NFC. The phone will start shipping before the end of 2012.

Back in April 2012, Sharp announced that they have begun to produce Oxide-TFT based LCDs at their Kameyama Plant #2 - and now indeed we see the first product to use the new technology. Sharp says that these displays will have smaller TFTs and thus increased pixel transparency - which leads to lower power consumption.