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OLED devices use organic semiconductors to create beautiful, flexible and efficient display panels.
UBI Research estimates that Samsung Display's flexible OLED shipments to Chinese device makers will triple in 2020, and will reach 47 million units (up from 15.5 million in 2019). Rigid OLED shipments to China will drop from 135 million in 2019 to 110 million in 2020.
In total, SDC's flexible OLED panel production will reach 155.5 million in 2020, up 34% from 2019. This follows a couple of years of declining volumes (152 million in 2017, 129 million in 2018 and 116 million in 2019).
It came to our attention that a couple of months ago, Taiwan-based INT Tech signed an agreement to establish an OLED display fab in the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, China. The total investment in the project will be 1 billion Yuan (around $143 million USD) and the local government will support the project.
INT Tech developed a proprietary glass-based high pixel density OLED technology - which enables ultra high-resolution displays on glass TFT backplanes. The company is aiming to produce lower-cost and higher-performance microdisplays for the AR/XR markets.
DSCC estimates that Apple paid around $950 million to Samsung Display in the last quarter - due to lower smartphone OLED orders. Apple is committed to buy a certain amount of displays, and this payment is a fine due to lower orders.
A year ago in July 2019, Apple paid $684 million - again as compensation for lower-than-agreen-on iPhone OLED panel orders.
This is a sponsored post by Park Systems
Park Systems Corp, a leading manufacturer of atomic force microscopy systems, announced that it has scaled up its AFM tools for 8-Gen or larger flat panel displays with new Park NX-TSH, based on its Tip Scanning Head technology. According to Park Systems, this is the only automated tip scan head system that can analyze samples larger than 300 mm on the market.
Park NX-TSH is specifically designed for ultra large flat panel display glass and 2D encoders, with integrated micro probe stations for conductive AFM and electric defect analysis. The system can scan up to 100 um x 100 um (x-y direction) and 15 um (z direction), and has a flexible chuck to accommodate samples larger than 300 mm and heavier than 1 Kg, and is so engineered for OLED, LCD and other large sample analysis.
UBI Research reports that OLED makers are aiming to adopt color filters instead of polarizers in foldable OLED displays. The polarizer help prevent internal reflections by external light, but they lower the brightness and limit the flexibility of the panel.
Using color filters instead of the polarizer may enable brighter panels and also thinner ones which are more flexible. BOE has already demonstrated such a panel back in 2017 (scheme shown above) - and they said it is 23% brighter than a polarizer OLED, and it is also 110 um thinner. Samsung Display is also developing similar technology.
DSCC posted an interesting article detailing their estimates for the production costs and prices of choice flexible and foldable AMOLED displays, in China and in Korea.
We'll start with the chart above, which compares the prices and quotes of several flexible OLEDs produced by Samsung in Korea. DSCC says that as the profitability of Samsung's OLED business is highly dependent on fab utilization, it is currently losing money on this business as the yields in its flexible OLED lines are only 38% - and fixed costs such as personnel and depreciation cannot be decreased. Having said that, DSCC sees higher utilization in the next two quarters, which will result in profitability for SDC's OLED unit.
The SID DisplayWeek 2020, the premier event for the display industry, will be held on August 3-7, 2020. The entire experience will now be online. While SID says that attendees can enjoy a full exhibition and conference, we wanted to reach out to our friend Sri Peruvemba, a board director and VP at SID, to learn more about what a virtual event means for SID.
Thanks for your time Sri - can you explain to us how does this virtual event work?
An exhibitor or attendee registers themselves like they do each year; upon completion, they will get access to the virtual forum. When you click on the event platform, you will be greeted with a reception area and have the choice of going to a talk in one of the various rooms that are organized by sessions just like the physical event, or you can walk the exhibits where each booth will have product details, images, videos, downloadable materials etc; you can attend the Business Conference, the CEO Forum, or the Women in Technology; you could attend classes and training sessions or just hang out in the networking area.
