December 2020

A couple of months ago ZTE announced the first smartphone with an under-the-OLED camera - the The Axon 20 5G. The phone is now shipping, and first reviews are quite dismal in terms of the quality of the selfie camera - and the effect on the screen.

YouTuber JerryRigEverything performed an interesting teardown of the Axon 20 5G, where he shows how the technology works - there's a small transparent OLED display right on top of the camera that is attached to the regular punch-hole display. The display in this phone is made by Visionox.

A new report from China suggests that BOE finally managed to enter Apple's supply chain for its iPhone devices. Only last month it was reported that BOE did not pass Apple's OLED quality test.

According to the report BOE will start supplying AMOLED displays to Apple before the end of 2020. In 2021, BOE will ship 10 million AMOLED displays to Apple. LGD will supply 40 million panels while Samsung will supply 130 million panels.

According to reports from Korea, Tianma plans to ship 40 million OLED panels in 2021. It is estimated that Tianma shipped a million panels in 2020, which means that this is quite an aggressive sales expansion for the Chinese display maker, and according to the report analysts expect the company to actually ship only around 7.5 million panels.

Tianma produces rigid OLEDs at its 5.5-Gen line in Shanghai, and in 2017 Tianma started producing rigid and flexible OLEDS at the company's 6-Gen fab in Wuhan. Later in 2018 the company announced plans to expand its Wuhan flexible AMOLED fab. This expansion plan was reportedly delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Samsung announced a 'First Look 2021' event that will take place on January 6th 2021, during which the company will introduce its latest products, technologies and visions for the future of the display.

If we look at the teaser image, it seems as if Samsung is set to unveil all sorts of new displays sizes. It is likely that Samsung will unveil its 110" 4K MicroLED TV which it already announced earlier this month, and analysts expect also some mini-LED monitors. Hopefully the company will also showcase new OLED displays, maybe the QD-OLED monitors that it is reportedly developing.

According to reports from Korea, Visionox has started production at its M4 flexible OLED module line in Guangzhou.

Earlier this month Visionox announced that it lighted up its 6-Gen flexible OLED production line in Hefei, Anhui, China. The company is quickly ramping up its production capacity and is also planning a fourth panel production line in Chengdu.

A couple of months ago ZTE announced the first smartphone with an under-the-OLED camera - the The Axon 20 5G. The phone is now shipping, and the first review is in, by The Verge.

The conclusion is rather dismal. The area in the screen under which the selfie camera resides is noticable - in fact the reviewer say that the "under-display integration is extremely noticeable on light backgrounds". You can see a square patch of the screen that exhibits a clear dithering effect. In fact the reviewer says that he'd prefer a notch-type display over what he gets in the Axon 20 5G.

Samsung Electronics started to adopt ultra-thin glass covers for its foldable AMOLEDs, instead of polyimide, as it says UTG offers higher durability. Samsung currently uses Samsung Display's UTG, and according to reports it aimed to develop its own solution in collaboration with Corning

A new report from Korea suggests that Samsung Electronics has halted this project as it realized it should better increase the efficiency of its current supply chain (i.e. Samsung Display's UTG solution) and secure lower prices. It may be that this decision is only temporarily, as it is likely that Samsung Electronics is still aiming to also increase the durability of its UTG covers and not just decrease costs.

2020 is soon over - and many in the world are really happy about that and hope that 2021 will bring the COVID-19 pandemic to an end. The OLED industry has been remarkably resilient to the pandemic, and shipments grew and developments continues.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on OLED-Info in 2020, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Kateeve announces massive layoffs (Feb 13)
2. Introducing The MicroLED Handbook (Jan 16)
3. LG announces its 2020 OLED TV lineup - with new 48-inch and rollable models (Jan 7)
4. Correcting OLED & MicroLED display quality to improve production efficiency & yields (Jan 28)
5. Can a transparent OLED TV show a black color? (Aug 23)
6. A Q&A with Cynora's CEO, to discuss the company's new blue emitter (Mar 5)
7. Will HiSense retire its OLED TV line in favor of dual-panel ULED-XD tech? (Jan 16)
8. LG Display to begin mass production by end of January 2020 (Jan 16)
9. Samsung starts to ship QD-OLED TV samples, may produce QD-OLED monitors (Aug 25)
10. Samsung Display to stop all LCD production by the end of 2020 (Apr 1)

Researchers from the Imperial College London have devised a method to create strong chiral light emitting polymers OLEDs. These OLED devices emit efficient polarized light - which means that they could be used to create OLEDs without an anti-reflection polarizer filter and thus enable higher efficiency displays.

The researchers discovered that using thin films of aligned polymer LED devices shaped like fusili pasta it is possible to emit high chirality light.

Last year APEVA announced that it has commissioned a 2-Gen OVPD OLED system in a customer pilot production line in Asia. Yesterday Aixtron (APEVA's parent company) announced that it received the final acceptance for its OVPD system from its customer - which is one of the world's largest display manufacturers.

APEVA now plans to enter into discussions about the feasibility of a final qualification project (phase III), which would ensure the scalability of the OVPD deposition technology to large area substrates.