The trade war between the US and China escalates, an the US is mostly focused on restricting semiconductor equipment, materials and chips sales to China as its sees semiconductors as a crucial strategic technology.

According to new reports, the US is now considering adding display technologies, mostly OLEDs, to the list of restricted technologies and may ask Japan and Korea to stop selling materials and equipment to Chinese display makers. 

Omdia released its latest IT OLED display forecasts, with some interesting projections. 

The company sees very nice growth ahead for OLED displays in the IT market, with shipments rising from around 9.7 million units in 2022 to over 70 million units in 2028. Most of the growth will come from adoption in laptops, but tablet adoption will also increase sharply.

Omdia says that the utilization at display production fabs is on the rise, recovering from 66% in January 2023 to 74% in the second quarter, as demand for TVs, laptops, monitors and smartphones is on the rise.

However, this is mostly true for LCD displays. OLED producers are still facing low demand, and fab utilization remains below 60%. The industry has yet to recover from the oversupply it experienced in 2022. This is true for both mobile AMOLED displays and OLED TV panels.

Market analysts from Omdia say that the XR market (which they define as a combination of AR, VR and MR) will grow from 24 million units in 2023 to almost 90 million units in 2028, a CAGR of 67%. In terms of revenues, the market (XR displays) will reach $1.15 billion in 2023.

As you can see from the graph above, VR applications still take up most of the market, and Omdia does not seem to think AR technology will reach mass markets soon, maybe only in 2028.

The MicroLED Industry Association published today a new white paper, that is focused on MicroLED production yields. This whitepaper discusses microLED yields, the current status, challenges ahead and several strategies and technologies that should help to mitigate the yield problem. Together with the white paper, the association is also hosting an open webinar.

Yield is an important parameter for display makers, as low yields can drastically increase production costs per panel sold. In the microLED industry, yields are even more crucial and are still a major challenge. In addition, as microLED production involves several separate steps, the yield discussion is more complex compared to the situation in LCD or OLED production.

The white paper is published on the MicroLED Association's website, and is open to the public.

According to DSCC, display fab utilization started to decline in Q2 2022, and this continued - and bottomed out towards the end of 2022. The industry is starting to recover, but the recovery is slower than expected before.

This is true for both LCD and OLED displays, as you can see in the graph above.

This is a sponsored post by Amorphyx, where display industry consultant Ian Hendy has interviewed Amorphyx's CEO John Brewer

Q: Can you start by telling us a little about what Amorphyx does, John?

Amorphyx has several fundamentally new technology platforms that provide for TFT performance improvements in three areas: (1) Switching speeds, with options to move to the Tera-Hz range ultimately, (2) Power, where the IGZO AMeTFT can achieve even lower power performance than today’s LTPO OLED Pro Motion displays and better refresh range, and (3) Small transistor size.

Our technology platforms are lower cost than the alternatives, and move from amorphous and crystalline semiconductor approaches, to devices based on different effects that do not have a semiconductor at all, yet can still drive a display, drive current, deliver grey scale and switch very fast. Or they can operate a flex IC at higher clock speeds than known today.

For now, our main commercial focus is on IGZO AMeTFT which is fundamentally a potential replacement transistor for LTPS or LTPO used in modern OLED phones and has the capability to replace more highly compensated LTPO circuits in modern Smartphone displays due to enhanced stability.

LG Display has an impressive presence  at CES 2023, showing many OLED displays, products and prototypes.

The video above starts with LG's automotive displays, which include new 18" slidable OLEDs and some more OLED and LCD displays.

Market research firm Omdia says that the global smartphone market is shrinking, and is set to fall 18% in 2022 to 1.425 billion units. LTPS AMOLED display shipments will decline 19% compared to 2021 to 44 million units (LCDs will decline even faster at 26%).

The only segmented that Omdia says is growing is the LTPO AMOLED one, with a fast growth of 94% in 2022 (to 148 million units), and will continue to grow in 2023 (25%).

LG Display has demonstrated a 12" 100 PPI full-color stretchable MicroLED display. The display can stretch up to 20% (to create a 14" display).

The display is said to be "close to commercialization" - as it is highly flexible, durable, and reliable. LGD says that it is the world's first full-color high-resolution stretchable display that was ever produced. But we do know that companies have demonstrated stretchable OLED displays in the past, for example Samsung with its 13" stretchable display shown in 2021.