August 2020

Xiaomi announced that it will start producing smartphones that adopt the company's Under-Display Camera technology next year. Xiaomi says that this is actually the company's third-gen under-the-OLED camera technology, that hasn't been adopted in mass market products yet.

Xiaomi says that it's latest development enabled the front camera to be completely disguised. This was achieved by a new pixel arrangement (with a large aperture ratio) developed by Xiaomi, and the optimization of the camera algorithms.

LG Technology Ventures (LG's venture capital investment arm) announced a strategic investment in OTI Lumionics. The investment will help OTI accelerate the adoption of its materials including its including its ConducTorr CPM solution for under display cameras.

A few weeks ago OTI announced that its latest version of ConducTorr Cathode Patterning Material (CPM) is ready for mass production and will start shipping in Q4 2020 for use in next generation mobile devices and other displays.

According to reports from China, Huawei is starting to develop its own OLED driver ICs - and will start mass producing these chips later in 2020

It seems that Huawei aims to increase its self-sufficiency (especially with the US sanctions in place). In addition, the company believes its own chips will outperform the chips supplied to Huawei by third party and will enable it to improve its smartphone design.

China-based OLED maker Visionox posted its H1 2020 financial results - with a net profit that dropped 47.3% (from H1 2019) to $13.4 million. This result was actually boosted by the sale of some assets, without which the company would have posted losses of $77 million.

Visionox revenues actually increased 4.5% to $173.8 million, but the company's profit margin was much lower as price of rigid OLED displays dropped 27% in June compared to last year. The price of flexible OLEDs was also down by 11%.

UBI Research estimates that OLED smartphone display shipments reached 87 million units in Q2 2020 (down 23.1% compared to Q2 2019, and down 17% compared to Q1 2020).

The drop in rigid OLED smartphone display shipments was 40.3% from Q2 2019 to Q2 2020 - due to a drop in mid-tier smartphone production in China. Flexible OLED shipments actually rose 38% from last year as you can see in the chart below.

Taiwan-based Innolux demonstrated several new display technologies that will enable the company to compete against OLED displays. First up we have this 55" rollable mini-LED display prototype. This is an emissive mini-LED display, it is not a mini-LED backlit LCD display.

Innolux did not disclose any specifications on this display (not even the resolution), but it did say that the display use a flexible PCB and features "high curvature, high brightness, high contrast, high saturation and high definition dynamic picture". Innolux says that rollable OLEDs face challenges of reliability and cost and this technology could prove to succeed where rollable OLEDs cannot.

China-based OLED lighting developer Yeolight Technology announced that its OLED panels were adopted by Hongqi in its latest H9 flagship sedan which is now being launched in the Chinese market. Hongqi is owned by FAW Car company and is actually the oldest Chinese passenger car brand.

The H9 uses 4 red OLED panels in each module. The panels are 131x32 mm in size and have 5 segments each. The color coordinate is CIY(0.69, 0.31).

According to Omdia, Samsung Display has started to provide QD-OLED TV prototypes to potential customers - including Samsung Electronics, Sony and Panasonic. Samsung Display is on track to start mass production in Q3 2021.

Interestingly, Samsung Electronics is still not sure whether it will adopt QD-OLED TVs in 2021, as the company aims to focus on mini-LED panels in 2021, and may only release QD-OLED TVs in 2022.

In 2019 Hisense announced that it developed a new LCD display technology which uses two LCD panels to improve the display's contrast. The company now launched its first such TV, the 65SX Dual-Cell LCD TV.

Hisense says that the 65SX TV will ship in Australia next month (September 2020), for $3,499 AUD (around $2,500 USD).

LG Display announced that its OLED TV panels have received an Accurate Picture Quality certification from Intertek, an assurance, inspection, product testing, and certification company.

LGD explains that Intertek's Accurate Picture Quality is tested in three categories: Delta Zero Color Fidelity, Black Luminance, and Viewing Angle Color Shift. LGD's OLEDs recorded perfect black level and in the Delta Zero Color Fidelity test, the results are similar to the level of professional "reference monitors".