March 2019

HP introduced its 2019 Spectre x360 15 high-end laptop in CES 2019 - including a top-of-the-line variant that sports a 15.6" 4K AMOLED display. HP originally aimed to start shipping it in March 2019, but this did not happen and according to Anandtech, the company says it now hopes to start shipping it on April 19.

Interestingly Anandtech also says that HP will release an updated HP Envy laptop which will also sport the same AMOLED display. We do not have more details on the new Envy laptop yet.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q4 2018. While eMagin sees growing demand for its products and an increased backlog ($10.6 million as of the end of 2018), the company experienced a manufacturing equipment related issue in Q4 which resulted in lower yields and loss of production. Revenues were $5.4 million (down from $6.4 million in Q4 2017) and the net loss was $2.5 million.

Looking at the whole year of 2018, revenues were $26.2 million (up 19% from 2017) and net loss was $9.6 million. As of December 31, 2018, the Company had approximately $3.4 million of cash, cash equivalents.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a self-powered wearable and washable OLED display device. The whole device is fabricated on textiles and the efficient OLED devices are driven by polymer solar modules.

Both the OLED device and the polymer solar panels are sensitive to moisture and oxygen, and regular OLED encapsulation will not protect such a device when washed. The researches designed a new washable encapsulation barrier using both ALD and spin coating. The device is flexible (curvature radius of 3 mm) and survived 20 washing cycles of 10 minutes each with little change in performance.

B&H photo is now listing Sony's 2019 range of OLED TVs. There's no shipping date yet, but there are prices for all of Sony's 2019 OLEDs. The mid-range A8G will cost $1,999 for the 55" model and $2,999 for the 65" model. The high-end consumer reference-quality A9G will cost $2,799 for the 55" model, $3,799 for the 65" model and $7,999 for the 77" model.

Sony' A8G features Sony's X1 Extreme processor, Android TV, Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio (the entire screen is the speaker), 4K upscaling (X-Reality PRO) and Motionflow XR for smooth fast action. The A9G adds Sony's Pixel Contrast Booster and an automated calibration mode (including a dedicated mode for Netflix).

Market analysts from CLSA say that in 2018 BOE shipped 2.7 million flexible OLED displays to Huawei, its main customer. These were produced at BOE's Chengdu B7 6-Gen OLED fab, which has reached yields of over 75% (DSCC estimates that BOE's yields are around 50%).

CLSA says that BOE will soon start ramping the second phase of its B7 line, and the company expects to ship 30-50 million AMOLED panels in 2019. CLSA says that this is a highly aggressive target - and they believe actual shipments will only be 12.9 million in 2019.

Samsung Electronics announced that it expects its first quarter earnings to be below market expectations - due to weakness in its display and memory businesses.

Samsung says that LCD prices have dropped more than expected and demand for its flexible OLED also declined. Analysts from Susquehanna Financial Group estimate that a weak smartphone market and a "dramatic" decline of Apple iPhone OLED orders caused Samsung Display's revenue to decline around 50% compared to Q4 2018.

A report from China suggests that Samsung sold over 500,000 units of its new flagship Galaxy S10 smartphones in China in only 7 days. it tok 30 days to achieve the same number of sales for Samsung's GS9 smartphone in 2018. Within two weeks of its launch, the GS10 is sold out in Hong Kong.

Reviews on Samsung's GS10 has been very positive, and Samsung expects to sell 40-45 million units in 2019.

Last week LG announced the pricing and availability of its 2019 OLED TVs, and today Amazon started to offer LG's new OLED C9 in the US. The TVs will actually ship in "3 to 5 weeks", i.e. some time in April.The C9 (which will be available in 55", 65" and 77" sizes) is based on LG's 2nd-gen Alpha 9 intelligent processor which enables LG's ThinQ AI to offer new display algorithms and Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. The TVs feature HDMI 2.1 which enables high frame rate (HFR) support, enhanced audio return channel (eARC), variable refresh rate (VRR) and automatic low latency mode (ALLM).

In early 2018 ASUS announced the Asus ProArt PQ22UC- a 21.6" 4K (204 PPI) ultra-portable OLED monitor, and now the company finally started shipping the new device - starting in the UK where the price is set at for £4,529 (!) which would make the US price at around $5,000.

The OLED display in ASUS' monitor produced using an ink-jet printing process by JOLED - which would make this the world's first ink-jet printed OLED product. JOLED's production capacity is not large, the company is still using a pilot-scale line, but it's likely that Asus is not expecting to sell many units of this high-end OLED monitor with that price tag...

CLSA estimates that Samsung's OLED shipments have declined 26% in Q1 2019 (compared to Q4 2018), as global handset shipments remain weak (especially in China) and shipments to Apple declined 60%.

CLSA says that SDC will post a 500 billion Won ($440 million USD) loss, compared to a 500 billion Won profit in Q4 2018 - due to the low OLED shipments, losses at the LCD business as panel prices fell 7% in the quarter and as the company finally started to recognize depreciation of its A4 OLED fab.