Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 28

Even though earlier rumors suggested Samsung will adopt an LCD for the upcoming GS5 phone, it was later reported that the GS5 will actually adopt a 5.2" WQHD (2560 x 1440, 560 PPI) AMOLED panel. Today, at a display technology roadmap seminar, Samsung confirmed that indeed they are developing a QHD AMOLED panel.

Samsung will not stop at 560 PPI. The company is actually planning an even higher density panel - a UHD panel that will feature 860 PPI. It will be very hard to justify such a high density on a mobile device, but I guess it's a marketing race that is hard to stop. At any case, it seems that Samsung will be adopting the Diamond Pixel architecture for those high resolution displays.

According to ZDNet, Samsung is developing the successor to the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. The Gear 2 will feature a totally different design and use a flexible AMOLED. ZDNet says that the company will reveal the new smartwatch in London in March or April.

According to earlier reports, Samsung sold over 800,000 Galaxy Gear devices. The smartwatch is considered to be a failure by most analysts and this explains why Samsung needs to change the design drastically.

Samsung reported their financial results for Q4 2013. Operating profit was lower than expected at $7.8 billion (compared to $8.3 billion in Q4 2012). Regarding OLEDs, Samsung says that total OLED shipments were actually down during the quarter, even though "new product sales increased".

Samsung however is expecting the OLED market to grow, as they plan to start adopting OLEDs in more products - including mid-range smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. The company will also launch "upgraded" flexible OLED panels in 2014.

Back in December 2012, rumors started to circulate about an upcoming Apple smartwatch called the iWatch, that will use a small PMOLED. Later rumors suggested Apple decided to use a plastic flexible OLED, possibly from LG Display.

Apple 2011 flexible OLED watch patent

Today a Korean publication (Digital Daily) reported that LGD has indeed been selected as the exclusive supplier for Apple's iWatch. LGD will start producing 1.52" OLED panels in Q3 2014, with an initial production volume of 2 million panels per month. The iWatch itself will be released in Q4 2014. The story was later removed from the Korean site, which can mean anything.

LG Display's CEO, Han Sang-Beom, said yesterday that the company aims to lead the wearable device display market with its flexible plastic-based OLEDs. The company is already in talks with its major clients ("top-tier makers") to supply flexible displays for bendable devices.

Han says that the company is ready to supply "many clients" with flexible OLEDs. The company already has internal shipment targets, but he wouldn't reveal those targets and any of the potential clients. Han did mention both Sony and Google as companies "interested in wearable devices" but he didn't go as far as saying they are interested in LGD's OLEDs.

OSD Displays developed a new high brightness PMOLED targeting the increasing market demand for wearable devices. The new OLED features a luminance of 1,000 nits - which is 10 times brighter than OSD's average OLED module. Such a high brightness OLED offers unparalleled clarity in direct sunlight.

The new OLED has a resolution of 96x16 and a viewing area of 0.78 inches diagonally. OSD says they developed a new structure and used new organic materials in order to achieve such high brightness.

The Holst Centre published a nice video showing some new flexible OLED demonstrators:

First up are a flexible OLED with an wireless sensor integrated into a fabric and a watch with a flexible OLED. There's also a cool demo that shows how you can iron a flexible OLED on a fabric - the OLED can withstand the high temperature without a problem. They also show how an OLED lighting can be used under water.

According to Reuters, Samsung says they have shipped over 800,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatches since September. This numbers are probably shipment to retailers and not actual sales. In addition, most Gear watches are sold bundled to Galaxy Note 3 phones (some operators offer them free of charge if you join a certain plan). In any case, Samsung believes the Gear is now the "most sold wearable watch available in the marketplace".

According to Business Korea, Samsung sold less than 50,000 Gear watches in Korea which is far below their initial industry expectations. The Galaxy Gear, Samsung's first smartwatch, features a 1.63" 320x320 (275 PPI) Super AMOLED display, a 1.9 mp camera (720p videos), 800Mhz processor, 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth 4, and a 315 mAh non-removeable battery.

Taiwan has a large display industry, but in recent years it seems that it is lagging behind Korea, Japan and China in AMOLED technologies. We asked a local industry expert to check out the three main Taiwanese AMOLED companies (AUO, Innolux and RiTDisplay), and now we post on his updates.

AUO

As we reported already, AUO started producing AMOLEDs in their 4.5-Gen fab in Singapore after years of delays. According to our source, AUO is actually only producing samples. Those 5" 720p (295 ppi) panel samples have been been submitted to a company based in China. Earlier reports suggested AUO is going to supply HTC and Sony but it appears these two companies will keep using LCDs for now.

The Holst Center is developing OLEDs on foil, with an aim to integrate them on textiles. In the following video you can see some demonstrations of OLED and LED integrated into textiles and OLEDs on a stretchable matrix, too:

I really liked that fabric with the Holst Centre with the hidden LEDs... Nice!