Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 16

When LG Electronics announced that their 2016 flagship phone, the G5 will have an "always on" display, this spurred speculation that it uses an OLED display (which makes sense as an LCD will require much more power in such a mode) - but here at OLED-Info we estimated that LGD will not be able to produce enough OLED panels for a new LGE flagship.

LG unveiled the G5 today, and indeed it uses an LCD - a 5.3" 1440x2560 one, in fact. This new smartphone is exciting early reviewers with it good looks, high-end specs, removable battery and plug-in modules.

MagnaChip announced that since 2007 it has shipped over 160 million AMOLED driver ICs. Most of these ICs went to smartphones, but MagnaChip says they also shipped drivers to digital cameras and tablets. The company's latest AMOLED drivers target the VR headset and automotive markets.

MagnaChip says the company has a unique proprietary foundry model. This model allows MagnaChip to apply its own unique AMOLED process patents as well as other intellectual property, proprietary process design kits and custom design-flow methodologies using internal and external foundries. MagnaChip's technology current uses 55-nm process nodes, and is developing sub 55-nm processes.

According to Tractica, the market for VR headsets will grow quickly in the next few years, to reach over 76 million units shipped in 2020. Tractica says that this will mark the second VR market, and this time both the hardware makers and the content publishers are working to make sure they release appealing and fine-tuned products.

The VR market should be closely watched by OLED makers. This is one of those applications in which OLED displays have a clear advantage - and this time it is the fast response rate. LCD displays are simply not good enough - and so it is likely that most VR headset makers will adopt OLED displays.

OLED Microdisplay maker eMagin has been developing a new VR head mounted display (HMD) that use the company's latest high resolution (2K by 2K) OLED microdisplays and patented optics. The company announced that it has signed a non-exclusive IP licensing agreement for the HMD technology with an undisclosed company.

The deal includes an upfront $1 million licensing free, and a commitment to use eMagin’s OLED microdisplays in the company’s headsets.

The OLED Association posted an interesting article, summarizing 2015 and giving its projection for 2016 and onwards. So first of all, they conclude that 2015 was a great year for the OLED display industry, with shipments up 53% over 2014 to reach almost 275 million units. AMOLED Revenues grew to almost $13 billion - up 40% over 2014.

The growth was mostly due to Samsung Display's effort to commercialize flexible OLED displays for mobile phones and the expansion of AMOLED customer beyond Samsung Electronics. LG Display also contributed to the OLED display market, and the OLED association estimates the LG sold over 400,000 OLED TVs. They also say that they shipped around 14,000 flexible OLEDs, but they probably mean around 14 million - as that about makes sense for the Apple Watch.

Visionox announced that it started to mass produce 1.45" AMOLED displays for wearable applications. The 1.45" panel features a resolution of 272x340 (300 PPI) and is less than one mm thick with a 1.5 mm frame. The display offers both MIPI and SPI interfaces.

Visionox also announced that the first product to use this display will be a smartwatch that will be on sale in China in February 2016. Visionox further revealed that they achieved the first AMOLED design win for a mobile phone, and the first phone that uses their 5.5" AMOLED panel announced in June will ship globally in March 2016.

OLED Microdisplay-maker eMagin announced the company will raise around $6 million in a registered direct offering of shares and warrants. eMagin will use the new capital to upgrade its manufacturing equipment, balance our production line and improve its yield.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

eMagin requires the added capacity as it aims to enter the commercial headset market which requires much higher volumes than the current military and industrial markets it targets.

The Void, a virtual-reality amusement park that will be opened in 2016 in Midvale, Utah, just revealed the headset that will be given to players when they enter the park. Up until now they used Oculus Rift DK2 headsets for testing, but the final system will use a custom-designed headset called the Rapture.

The Rapture uses two curved OLED displays, each with a resolution of 2048x1556. The unique form factor will offer a 180-degree field of view (The Rift DK2 has a FOV of 100 degrees). The rapture uses custom designed dual-lens optics.

In August 2015 Polyera, a US-based OTFT backplane developer, announced their first product, the Wove Band flexible E Ink smart band, to be released in the second half of 2016. Our sister-site E-Ink-Info posted an interesting interview with the company's Special Projects VP, Brendan Florez.

Brendan explains the company's OTFT backplane technology and details Polyera's business and goals. Polyera's backplane has been demonstrated to drive an OLED display in the past, so hopefully OTFT OLEDs will be coming from Polyera in the future. Read the full interview here.

The first-generation Apple Watch uses a flexible OLED display, exclusively produced by LG Display. In June 2015 it was rumored that say that Apple signed up Samsung Display to be the second OLED supplier for the next-generation Watch, and today ET News re-iterated the same report.

According to ET News, Apple is also considering ordering AMOLED panels from Samsung for the next-generation iPhone 7. ET News says that Apple will decide on the iPhone 7 display in November - and it it's going to be a flexible OLED display it will have a huge effect on Samsung as the Korean company will have to massively increase its flexible OLED capacity.