Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 26

Huawei launched their TalkBand B1 smart wearable device in February, made it available in China, but now it's finally coming to Europe too - Amazon.co.uk lists it for £99 and says it will ship on June 30. Hopefully it will launch in the US soon.

The TalkBand has a curved (flexible) 1.4" 128x16 PMOLED display, made by Futaba. This is Futaba's film OLED, and it's the first device to actually adopt these panels. It's great to finally see flexible PMOLEDs on the market. TDK Micro (bought by Futaba) has been showing flexible PMOLEDs since 2010, and it took them almost four years to actually bring those to market.

Last week AU Optronics showed several AMOLED prototypes at SID 2014, and now we got some photos of all those displays (thanks Sri!). So first up is the flexible 5" 720p panel. This panel uses a plastic substrate and uses a thin film encapsulation. The minimum bending radius is less than 1 cm.

Next up is a "normal" rigid panel. This one is 5.7" in size with a resolution of 1440x2560 (WQHD). This high-density (517 PPI) features a color gamut of 100% NTSC, a contrast ratio of over 100,000:1, a brightness of 300 cd/m² and a response time of less than 0.01 ms.

Sony announced a new 0.23" 640x400 (nHD+) OLED microdisplay aimed for wearable devices. The microdisplay features a pixel pitch of 7.8um and a 110% NTSC color gamut. Sony aims to ship this display in 2015.

Sony says that the new microdisplay, while being smaller (and with a lower resolution) compared to their current 0.5" product, it offers a higher performance. The contrast ratio has been improved from 10,000:1 to 100,000:1, the brightness enhanced from 200 to 800 cd/m² and the power consumption has been slashed from 400 to 140 mW. The viewing angle has also been improved.

Back in December 2012, rumors started to circulate about an upcoming Apple smartwatch called the iWatch. Since then we had countless reports about this wearable device. The latest report from Japan's Nikkei Asian Review claims that Apple decided to launch the iWatch in October 2014. The new device will run on Apple's newly announced iOS 8, and will monitor health-related data, such as calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood glucose and blood oxygen levels. It will also show notifications from your iPhone of course.

Apple 2011 flexible OLED watch patent

According to the Nikkei, the iWatch will have a curved OLED display (earlier reports suggested that LG Display will be the exclusive supplier). Apple is apparently very confident in this new product, and it plans to produce about 3 to 5 million units per month.

Two months ago AUO announced a 1.6" AMOLED for wearable applications. Now at SID Display Week 2014, AUO is showing this new display. The company says that this is the world's first 1.6" in-cell touch AMOLED. The panel is only 0.5 mm thick and is very power efficient.

AUO is also showing a 0.2 mm thick 5" flexible OLED prototype. This panel is made on a plastic substrate and it adopts thin film encapsulation technology - which enable it to reach a minimum bending radius of less than 1 cm.

Last week Engadget reported that samsung is developing a new virtual reality headset, which will be similar to Oculus VR's headset - and will also sport an AMOLED display. Today Engadget reports that Samsung's headset is actually developed in collaboration with Oculus VR.

In this collaboration Oculus provides the software while Samsung provides the hardware. As part of the collaboration, Samsung gives Oculus early-access to its next-gen high-resolution (larger than Full-HD) OLED displays.

According to an industry insider I just talked to, Google is in talks with MicroOLED to supply OLED microdisplays for the next generation Google Glass. Google currently use LCoS microdisplays by Himax (they even bought a stake in the Himax Display in July 2013). Our source says that Google isn't happy with the performance of the LCoS microdisplay and wants to upgrade to an OLED. This will be a huge win for the French startup if true.

Back in 2013 it was reported that Google are in talks with Samsung Display to supply OLED microdisplays for the next-gen Glass product. Samsung Display indeed developed a 0.6" XGA OLED microdisplay back in 2011, but as far as I know SDC is not producing any microdipslays at the moment.

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies, just returned from a trip to Asia, and he came back with some pretty wild Apple rumors. Peter claims that there are several Apple prototypes "floating around" - including an iPhone with a 5.5" 2K OLED display, a foldable iPhone with a 4" OLED (that opens into an iPad mini) and of course smart watches and wearable devices.

It seems highly unlikely that Apple will adopt an OLED display in its next iPhone. Apple does not like to rely on a single supplier as currently only SDC can produce AMOLED in any meaningful volume. And even SDC does not have the required volume to supply Apple. The foldable iPhone is even less likely and is probably just speculation (or, as Peter himself says, this may just be Apple trying to confuse its competitors).

Engadget reports that samsung is developing a new virtual reality headset. Samsung's headset (which will be similar to Oculus Rift's headset, seen below) will sport an AMOLED display, and will only work paired with a next-gen Galaxy phone (probably the Note 4) and tablet (hopefully the upcoming AMOLED ones).

Engadget doesn't have a lot of information - but according to them the OLED display will as good or better as the one used by Oculus. This isn't surprising as it was always likely that Oculus are using SDC's panels. In any case, Samsung is set to beat Oculus (and other players such as Sony) to the market and release this headset by the end of 2014.

A few weeks ago Japan's Nikkei Asian Review posted an article saying that Samsung decided to scrap their plans for an OLED TV fab. According to Nikkei's report, Samsung decided to setup a new facility to produce small and medium sized OLED panels.

Today Korea's Yonhap news posted an article saying that Samsung indeed decided to setup a new AMOLED fab. Samsung may increase its CapEX spending by 8.6% in 2014 (to $24.4 billion). The investment in the new OLED fab in Asan will be between $3 billion to $5 billion.