BOE Display

BOE launched a new flexible AMOLED display, branded as Q10 AMOLED, that has a new OLED stack and delivers increased performance - the company said that compared to its previous flagship OLED stack, it enhances the peak brightness by 12.5%, the lifetime by 33%, and it reduces the power consumption by 10%. The company also says the color saturation and response time is increased.

The new Q10 display will debut at three smartphones, the OnePlus 13, OPPO Find X8 and Vivo iQOO 13. That specific screen is a 6.8" 3168x1440 (510 PPI) 120Hz LTPO AMOLED. DisplayMate tested the new display, and says it is the world's highest performing mobile display ever, seting or matching 21 performance records. It is the first display to receive DisplayMate's A++ rating.

OLED TVs offer excellent image quality, outperforming LCDs with superb contrast, excellent and vivid color reproduction and fast refresh rates. In addition, OLEDs enable thin and efficient TVs. OLED TV production has been increasing up until a year ago, reaching a potential capacity of around 10 million units. This is impressive, but considering the entire global TV market that amounts to around 250 million units, OLEDs represent only around 2.5% of the total market (it is important to note that OLEDs tend to be produced in large sizes and carry a much higher average selling price compared to LCDs).

But OLED TV production capacity growth has declined in recent years. In this article we will shortly detail the history of OLED TV production, and look at potential paths towards increased penetration in the future. More details and into the future of OLED technologies and OLED TVs is included in the OLED Toolbox.

A bit of history: in 2013, both Samsung and LGD started producing OLED TV panels. Samsung chose the straightforward RGB side-by-side architecture, in which there are three sub-pixels, with red, green and blue OLED emitters. LG chose its own WRGB (or WOLED) architecture (the IP was acquired from Kodak in 2009) which uses four white OLED subpixels (made from yellow and blue OLED subpixels). Both companies released 55" FHD OLED TVs, priced at over $10,000 per unit. It soon became clear that Samsung's approach was not scalable, while LGD managed to enter mass production quickly and reduce prices dramatically within a few years to compete with the dominant LCD TV technology.

The Chairman of the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, sent a letter to the US Secretary of Defense, saying that the US should place both BOE and Tianna on the DoD 1260H blacklist as Chinese military companies.

In his letter, Mr. Moolenaar says that by using government support, the Chinese has taken over the display industry, and are already leading both the LCD and OLED markets (which is indeed mostly true). As these two companies have close ties to the Chinese government and military, this, according to the letter, poses a big risk to US and its allies.

During the company's 2024 Innovation Partner Conference, BOE unveiled its latest OLED microdisplay. The display is a 0.9" 4K (6020 PPI) panel, that is based on a tandem OLED architecture. It achieves a maximum brightness of 5,000 nits.

BOE has also unveiled ultra-light (150 grams) VR glasses based on these displays. It is not clear whether this is a product that BOE aims to commercialize, or a reference design, or a product produced by one of its partners.

Towards the end of 2023, BOE officially announced its plans for a 8.6-Gen flexible LTPO AMOLED line in Chengdu. The agreement with Chengdu's local government was signed in early 2024, and in April BOE announced it is starting to construct the new fab.

During the company's Innovation Partner Conference, BOE demonstrated a new 6.55" OLED panel prototype that utilizes TADF-sensitized materials and a tandem stack architecture. The company says that the TADF materials offer significantly improved color gamut, and it achieve 95% BT.2020 coverage, this in addition to the high power efficiency and long lifetime. 

It is our understanding that BOE's TADF-Sensitized material platform combines a deep green Hyperfluorescence emitter and a standard deep-red phosphorescence material. The blue emitter is likely a standard fluorescence bluet emitter.

According to reports from Japan, Apple decided to adopt a 6.1" AMOLED display for its upcoming iPhone SE 4 smartphone, which will mean that all of the company's smartphone products will be based on OLED displays.

We actually reported this in March 2024, and back then it was suggested that Apple's target price was $25 for the OLED display - which was too low for Samsung Display that decided not to continue with its discussions with Apple. Back then it was estimate that BOE will supply the majority of the displays, and some orders will go to Tianma. According to the new report, the second supplier is actually LG Display.

Recently, BOE, Tianma, TCL, EDO and Visionox all posted their financial results for Q2 2024, and all were rather positive. Samsung Display and LG Display also posted increased earnings for the quarter.

So we start with BOE, that posted revenues of 93.4 billion yuan (13.17 billion USD) for the first half of 2024, an increase of 16.47% over H1 2023. Its net profit increased 210% compared to last year (2.285 billion Yuan, or $320 million USD). BOE enjoyed increased LCD sales and optimized production, and also noted high demand for high-end foldable OLED displays.

UBI Research estimates that 12 million OLED tablet panels will ship in 2024, and increase of over 500% from 2023 (1.84 million units), following Apple's adoption of OLEDs in its iPad Pro devices for the first time.

UBI sees the tablet OLED display market continuing to grow, and is expected to reach 30 million units in 2028. The current market leaders are Samsung Display and LG Display, but other display makers are also targeting this market, with BOE aiming to ship 1.5 million OLED tablet panels in 2024, and Visionox around 800,000 units.

DSCC says that display makers are increasing their OLED CapEx investment as demand for OLED displays is on the rise. DSCC has raised its forecast for OLED spending by 14% compared to their previous update, while they retain their previous forecast for LCD, OLED microdisplay and microLED display equipment spending. 

Between 2020 and 2027, OLED display makers will invest $44 billion in new production equipment. The spending on OLED equipment will keep growing year after year from 2023 to 2027, reaching $6.5 billion in 2027, as OLED penetration in the smartphone, tablet and laptop market is increasing, and fab utilization is increasing too, encouraging display makers to add capacity.