Direct emission - Page 10

LG Display had a very big booth at SID 2012, showing lot's of displays. The main item on show was the 55" OLED TV panel, but all the rest of the displays were LCDs. As I said in my first post from SID, LG's OLED TVs stunning with great colors, amazing contrast and excellent 3D effects. Unlike Samsung, LGD had only one TV on show, showing 2D and 3D convent sequentially (the 3D uses passive glasses). LG's OLED panel is extremely thin - 4 mm, you can hardly see it looking from the side.

During LG Display's keynote speech, they made some very interesting comments about their OLED technology and business. First of all, LG expects OLED TVs to grow at 320% (CAGR) from 2012 to 2016, reaching 11% of the TV market, while the rest of the market - LCD/PDP/CRT will only grow at 1.1%. OLED TV is the "next evolution" of TV technology.

Samsung had a very big presence at SID 2012 - showing all sorts of OLED panels, from small ones to large 55" panels. Obviously the most interesting item on display was the 55" OLED TV. As I said before, these OLED TVs are simply stunning, beautiful colors and images and even the 3D effects were great.

Samsung was showing 3 TVs: one showing regular 2D images, the other 3D images (you needed to use active shutter glasses of course) and the final one showing dual-view images (you use the glasses but each user sees and hears a different Full-HD image altogether). I went to the booth several times (and was also invited for a one-on-one guided press tour) - but in all the excitement I forgot to actually shoot a video...

Update: Here's the complete list of OLED related posts and notes from SID 2012

So, SID 2012 is now over. Personally it was a very good show, even though I hear from many exhibitors that it was slow compared to past years. There were a lot of companies showing OLED displays, lighting panels and related products, and it seems that OLEDs are starting to become mainstream. I do plan to post in-depth posts with interesting details of my talks with various OLED companies, but in the meantime, here's my own "best of SID" list.

There's an interesting article in HDTV Magazine about Samsung's and LG's OLED TV program. The author says that an LG Executive old him that Samsung has given up on direct-emission OLED technology and will instead opt for LG's WOLED (RGBW) in their upcoming OLED TVs. According to the article, this is because of issues with manufacturing and scalability.

I personally find that hard to believe, but of course, like the article's author says, "anything can happen". Months ago, when we learned that LG will use a WOLED design in their TVs, it was assumed that we'll see some ugly marketing battles between those two different OLED architecture. So perhaps this is all there is to this rumor. Hopefully we'll hear something from SMD soon.

OLEDNet posted an article with some new details about LG's upcoming 3.5-Gen flexible OLED line in LG's Paju plant (E2), Korea. According to the report, LG contracted Jusung Engineering and Avaco to supply the equipment. Both companies will supply encapsulation equipment. The deals are worth 11.4 billion Won (about $10 million) for Jusung and 7.6 billion Won ($6.7 million) for Avaco.

OLEDNet says that total cost for this new line (which is actually an extension of the existing pilot line) is worth 200 billion Won ($176 million).

Universal Display's CFO (Sidney Rosenblatt) attended Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference 2012 yesterday, and he gave some very interesting updates. First of all, he commented on the recent AUO and Idemitsu Kosan (IK) agreement. According to Sid, IK are not selling emitter materials - they are offering organic materials that go into other layers of the OLED stack. They do not believe the AUO-IK agreement will have any effect of PHOLED sales to AUO, and in fact he tells us that UDC and Idemitsu Kosan are developing OLED materials together for Sony.

Host materials

In their latest earning report of 3Q 2011, UDC announced that they started to offer OLED host materials - and had almost $8 million in revenue from those materials. Today Sidney explained this business a bit further. Host materials are the materials that you put the emitting materials into (Sidney used a metaphor - if the OLED is chocolate milk, then the milk is the host material and the chocolate is the emitter). These materials are considered a commodity, and UDC didn't think to sell those as it's not an interesting market for them.

Update: CNet now reports that Samsung said this was incorrect - and the release date is set for the second half of 2012. Oh well...

CNet reports that Samsung told them that they can expect the 55" Super OLED TV (The KN55ES9000) to be launched in the UK around the Spring of 2012. That means around March or April 2012, which is actually good news (at CES Samsung said that the TV will launch in Q2 or Q2 2012).

We'll probably have to wait for the actual launch to hear the price in the UK. In any case, Samsung's TV has a 55" Direct Emission OLED panel that supports active-shutter 3D and Samsung's Smart TV and Smart-Interaction technologies. It includes a camera can can be controlled via a remote control, voice control, motion control and face recognition.

There are reports that LG Display decided to built a pilot 3.5-Gen (730 × 460 mm) flexible OLED production line. They have ordered the equipment, which will arrive by 3Q 2012, and the line will become active by the end of 2012. An official from LGD is quoted saying that it will take 1-2 years to develop and verify the process and produce prototypes. The company hasn't decided on a production schedule yet.

LG Display's flexible OLEDs will use the same technology as Samsung's flexible prototypes - a polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use WOLED with color filters).

So, OLED was the most discussed tech trend on CES. But the OLED TVs also got a lot of praise from reviewers and consumers - who were amazed to see the panel's thinness, the contrast, the colors and the fast refresh rates. In short - the image on Samsung's and LG's OLED TVs is amazing!

Samsung Super OLED TV

CNET gave LG's OLED TV the "Best of CES" award: "The winning LG measures just 4mm in depth...and boasts a bezel around the screen just 1mm wide. It's basically all gorgeous picture... CES is a TV-centric show, OLED is potentially the best TV technology ever, and CNET editors agreed that 2012 would be the year of the organic diode". CNET actually says that it's hard to say which is the better OLED TV - the Samsung or the LG one, but LG seems to be more of a finished product, so they gave the award to LG.

This wasn't a big surprise, but Samsung officially announced their 55" Super-OLED TV. Samsung explains that the 'Super OLED' technology is what we call 'True-OLED' - or RGB OLED subpixels as opposed to LG's white OLED with color-filters design (WOLED-CF), and LED TVs. The TV also supports active-shutter 3D and Samsung's Smart TV and Smart-Interaction technologies. It includes a camera can can be controlled via a remote control, voice control, motion control and face recognition.

While Samsung promises that the Super-OLED TV will be available by Q2 or Q3 2012, they didn't release any pricing information or even a product model. We'll have to wait for these... Here's a video from Samsung's press conference when they announced this cool TV: