January 2018

Professor Ching Tang from the University of Rochester and Steven Van Slyke, currently the Chief Technology Officer at Kateeva have been inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame for their pioneering work on OLEDs. Both Steven and Tang worked on OLED displays as research scientists at Eastman Kodak.

The US National Investors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973, and more than 500 men and women who conceived, patented, and advanced some of the most groundbreaking technological achievements in the United States has been induced so far.

Samsung Electronics reported its results for Q4 2017, with a record quarterly profit of $11.2 billion driven by strong demand for memory chips and high-end displays. Samsung Display reports increased OLED shipments for premium smartphones.

Looking at Q1 2018, SDC says that its OLED business is likely to be affected be declining demand due to seasonality and increased competition from LTPS LCD. For the the whole of 2018, SDC expects OLED to increase its penetration in the smartphone industry, and the company aims to introduce new premium applications such as foldable displays and OLEDs for the automotive market.

In the last few weeks we heard several reports that Apple is seeing lower iPhone X sales than initially expected. Japan's Nikkei Asian Review now claims that Apple slashed its iPhone X production target for Q1 2018 from 40 million units to only 20 million.

Asian Review also says that the lower sales could result in a delay to Apple's plans to introduce OLED displays in its new iPhone models in 2018. It was indeed reported last week that Apple may cancel its plans to introduce a new 5.8" OLED iPhone in 2018, and only launch the larger 6.5" OLED iPhone (with screens provided by LG Display).

A somewhat confusing article from Taiwan claims that Visionox developed a new VR AMOLED display that achieves a very high pixel density of 814 PPI.

The original article only actually refers to Black Cattle Food - which is a Chinese soy and grain beverage maker that teamed up with Visionox and provided financial support for Visionox' upcoming 6-Gen flexible AMOLED fab.

LG Display published a beautiful video today that introduces the company's OLED TV and signage technologies, explains the benefits of OLEDs and presents LGD's latest beautiful OLED signage installations.

In this video you can see LGD's curved OLED installations at Dubai Mall, Incheon airport, the Seoul N Tower and more.

According to Business Korea, LG Display signed an agreement with Sony to supply it with flexible pOLED displays for future Sony smartphones. Sony is not a major smartphone player globally, but in Japan it holds 14.9% of the market (second only to Apple).

LG Display is already supplying Sony with OLED displays for Sony's OLED TVs, and reportedly in 2017 Sony requested LGD to double its OLED panel shipments as demand for Sony's OLED TVs has been better than expected.

Air Products announced that it has been awarded a long-term contract with Samsung Display to supply nitrogen, oxygen and liquid argon to SDC's OLED manufacturing complex in Tangjeong, South Korea. Air Products has been supplying SDC's Tangjeong production line since 2004 and this new contract is a renewal of its current supply agreement.

A few days ago Praxair Inc announced that it has signed a long-term gas supply agreement with Shanghai's EverDisplay. Praxair will supply EDO with nitrogen, oxygen and Helium for its new 6-Gen AMOLED fab which will require 720 tons per day of Nitrogen. The bulk gas supply is scheduled to begin in mid-2018. EDO aims to start trial production at its new 6-Gen fab in January 2019 and mass production is expected in 2021.

In a somewhat confusing article, ETNews claims that Samsung Display's utilization rate at its A3 flexible OLED line has fallen more than 10% compared to 2017 as the company sees decreased shipments to Apple. This is yet another sign that Apple is seeing lower iPhone X sales than initially expected.

ETNews says that Q1 is always a seasonally low quarter, but this year's utilization rate is lower than what Samsung experienced in Q1 2017. ETNews says that Apple's share of the A3 capacity was about 77%, with the rest of the production going for Samsung Electronics and Chinese phone makers.

In November 2017 KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo estimated that Apple will launch three new iPhone models in 2018 - two of these will sport OLED displays, the 5.8" and 6.5" models. A new report from Digitimes, however, says that Apple may eventually only launch the larger (6.5-inch) OLED variant in 2018.

According to Digitimes, Apple is developing four new iPhones: two LCD Models (5.8" and 6") and two OLED Models (6" and 6.5"), but it may abandon the smaller OLED variant. This is mostly due to lower than expected iPhone X sales.

Philips (TPVision) announced its OLED TV lineup for 2018. Philips will offer three models, the OLED 973, OLED 873 and OLED 803. All of these 2018 TVs will be pretty similar, and all will feature 4K WRGB OLED panels, Philips' P5 "Perfect-Picture" processor, 3-sided Ambilight, HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ (will arrive in Q2 2018), Quad-core Android TV platform with Google Assistant and 16GB of memory.

The main difference is the TV design, and the 973 will also offer a 60W soundbar. The 973 and 873 will come in 65", while the 803 will also have a 55" option. The OLED 973 and OLED 873 will launch in Q1 2018, and the OLED 803 will arrive in the summer. Philips did not yet disclose the pricing of its new OLED TVs.