BOE Display

During the company's 2024 Innovation Partner Conference, BOE unveiled its latest OLED microdisplay. The display is a 0.9" 4K (6020 PPI) panel, that is based on a tandem OLED architecture. It achieves a maximum brightness of 5,000 nits.

BOE has also unveiled ultra-light (150 grams) VR glasses based on these displays. It is not clear whether this is a product that BOE aims to commercialize, or a reference design, or a product produced by one of its partners.

Towards the end of 2023, BOE officially announced its plans for a 8.6-Gen flexible LTPO AMOLED line in Chengdu. The agreement with Chengdu's local government was signed in early 2024, and in April BOE announced it is starting to construct the new fab.

During the company's Innovation Partner Conference, BOE demonstrated a new 6.55" OLED panel prototype that utilizes TADF-sensitized materials and a tandem stack architecture. The company says that the TADF materials offer significantly improved color gamut, and it achieve 95% BT.2020 coverage, this in addition to the high power efficiency and long lifetime. 

It is our understanding that BOE's TADF-Sensitized material platform combines a deep green Hyperfluorescence emitter and a standard deep-red phosphorescence material. The blue emitter is likely a standard fluorescence bluet emitter.

According to reports from Japan, Apple decided to adopt a 6.1" AMOLED display for its upcoming iPhone SE 4 smartphone, which will mean that all of the company's smartphone products will be based on OLED displays.

We actually reported this in March 2024, and back then it was suggested that Apple's target price was $25 for the OLED display - which was too low for Samsung Display that decided not to continue with its discussions with Apple. Back then it was estimate that BOE will supply the majority of the displays, and some orders will go to Tianma. According to the new report, the second supplier is actually LG Display.

Recently, BOE, Tianma, TCL, EDO and Visionox all posted their financial results for Q2 2024, and all were rather positive. Samsung Display and LG Display also posted increased earnings for the quarter.

So we start with BOE, that posted revenues of 93.4 billion yuan (13.17 billion USD) for the first half of 2024, an increase of 16.47% over H1 2023. Its net profit increased 210% compared to last year (2.285 billion Yuan, or $320 million USD). BOE enjoyed increased LCD sales and optimized production, and also noted high demand for high-end foldable OLED displays.

UBI Research estimates that 12 million OLED tablet panels will ship in 2024, and increase of over 500% from 2023 (1.84 million units), following Apple's adoption of OLEDs in its iPad Pro devices for the first time.

UBI sees the tablet OLED display market continuing to grow, and is expected to reach 30 million units in 2028. The current market leaders are Samsung Display and LG Display, but other display makers are also targeting this market, with BOE aiming to ship 1.5 million OLED tablet panels in 2024, and Visionox around 800,000 units.

DSCC says that display makers are increasing their OLED CapEx investment as demand for OLED displays is on the rise. DSCC has raised its forecast for OLED spending by 14% compared to their previous update, while they retain their previous forecast for LCD, OLED microdisplay and microLED display equipment spending. 

Between 2020 and 2027, OLED display makers will invest $44 billion in new production equipment. The spending on OLED equipment will keep growing year after year from 2023 to 2027, reaching $6.5 billion in 2027, as OLED penetration in the smartphone, tablet and laptop market is increasing, and fab utilization is increasing too, encouraging display makers to add capacity.

Earlier this year we reported that Apple has decided to sign up BOE as its AMOLED supplier for the upcoming budget iPhone SE4 (with a 6.1" AMOLED display). According to reports back then, Apple's low price target ($25) was not profitable for Samsung that decided to not supply any AMOLEDs for this iPhone model.

According to new reports from Korea, Apple now signed up LG Display to supply some of its iPhone SE4 panels - mostly backup (BOE had its issues with Apple before) and support, as BOE will remain the main panels supplier.

According to Omdia, sales of OLED panels in sizes over 9-inch (the company refers to these as Large Area Displays) will increase 124.6% in 2024. In 2023, the market contracted 25.7%, with the only exception being OLED monitor panels that grew in shipments.

In 2024, Omdia says that all application areas will see an increase in shipments - TVs, monitors, tablets and laptops. Only the company's "other" category will see a decrease in sales. In particular, tablet OLED shipments are projected to increase by 294% compared to 2023, largely due to Apple's adoption of OLEDs in the 2024 iPad Pro tablets. Laptop OLED sales will increase 152.6%, and monitors OLEDs will increase 139.9%. Finally, OLED TV panel shipments will increase 34.8%.

Display Week 2024 was a busy and exciting event for Kateeva. CEO Bin Liu was on site at our US HQ in Newark, California. At the SID show in San Jose, he met with customers to get a flavor of the latest display technology innovations that will inform our product roadmap.

Bin Liu, CEO, Kateeva

One of the highlights at SID week was a celebration of Kateeva’s CTO Emeritus, Steve Van Slyke. Steve and Ching Wan Tang received the Karl Ferdinand Braun Award for their co-invention of the OLED device. The accolade is the highest honor conferred by the Society for Information Display. It recognizes “outstanding technical achievement in, or contribution to, the display industry”.

Since becoming CEO in late 2022, Bin and the leadership team have implemented a new vision for Kateeva. He will share the details in a keynote talk at Display Innovation China in Shanghai, this week (July 3-5).