In October 2020 TCL's CSoT demonstrated some new rollable OLED technologies, and today at CES the company published this nice video you see below that again demonstrates new rollable OLEDs:

TCL first shows a rollable smartphone, that uses a 7.8-inch AMOLED that rolls into a 6.7-inch one. The display features a bending radius of 3 mm and CSoT says it can withstand up to 100,000 sliding cycles.

TCL's CSoT demonstrated some interesting new displays at the DTC 2020 conference a few days ago - including rollable OLEDs, foldable OLEDs, ink-jet printed rollable OLEDs and new microLED prototypes.

In the video above, you can first see the company's latest inkjet-printed rollable OLED, with a size of 17-inch. CSoT says that it managed to reduce the OLED thickness by removing the color filters it used in earlier designs, which improves the flexibility - as you can see this display rolls up very nicely.

According to reports from China, TCL says its CSOT OLED inkjet printing project is going well, and the company expects to start mass production at its 8.5-Gen Guangzhou T8 (owned by Huaxing Optoelectronics) production line in 2024.

Earlier this year the Guanghzhou development commission issued a report that says CSOT's investment in this R&D and production project will amount to 46 billion yuan ($6.8 billion USD), and the construction of the actual production line will be in 2021-2023.

DSCC updated its OLED material market forecasts, seeing a lower growth ahead. DSCC says the AMOLED stack material market will grow from $928 million in 2019 to $2.06 billion in 2024 in a CAGR of 17%. Only a couple of months ago DSCC estimated that the market in 2024 will reach $2.69 billion - and even these were reduced from earlier estimates due to COVID-19.

DSCC says that the main reason behind the reduction in its forecast is lower OLED TV capacity. The company now expects a slower ramp up at the Guangzhou fab, and LG's P-10 10.5-Gen fab is now removed from the forecast period.

DSCC updated its capacity and demand outlook for the OLED industry. DSCC says that the oversupply situation for smartphone OLEDs will continue to effect the industry for years ahead.

According to DSCC the reason for the oversupply is Samsung's near-monopoly on flexible OLED phone panels - and the fact that the company keeps prices high and prefers high profit margins even though it leads to low utilization rates. DSCC sees China's capacity (which includes LG's Gunagzhou fab) share to rise from 5% in 2017 to 30% in 2020 and finally to 49% in 2025.

JOLED announced that TCL CSoT has invested 20 billion Yen (around $187 million USD) in the company, and has also signed an agreement to jointly develop OLED TV printing technologies.

This is a very interesting development. TCL has been a long time believer in inkjet printing for OLED displays, and the company has established Juhua Printing in 2016 (together with TianMa and other collaborators) as an "open-innovation platform" to develop ink-jet printing of OLED panels. JOLED was not involved as far as we know in this alliance - so has TCL given up on Juhua and is now aiming to rely on JOLED's technology?

In 2019, it was reported that Samsung Electronics is in early talks with China's CSoT for flexible OLED supply for low-end and mid-tier smartphones. According to a new report from Korea, Samsung Electronics has decided to adopt a CSoT flexible OLED panel for its upcoming budget Galaxy M41 smartphone.

Motorola Edge

If true, this is the first time that Samsung Electronics will adopt an OLED that wasn't produced by Samsung Display. The M41 will use a 6.67-inch 1080x2340 AMOLED, the same panel used in Xiaomi's Mi 10 and Motorola's Edge.

TCL subsidiary China Star Optoelectronics (CSoT) signed an OLED technology license agreement and material purchase agreement with Universal Display (UDC). UDC will supply phosphorescent OLED materials CSoT to be used in its display products.

CSoT is currently producing flexible OLEDs in its T4 line which has a monthly capacity of 45,000 6-Gen substrates. Last week it was reported that CSoT is planning to build a new flexible OLED production line in Wuhan, in a $1.4 billion investment.

Digitimes reports that TCL's CSoT is planning to build a new flexible OLED production line in Wuhan. The T5 line is still only at an early planning stage, but investment could reach about $1.4 billion.

The T5 line will be CSoT's 2nd flexible OLED line - it's current T4 line (which has a monthly capacity of 45,000 6-Gen substrates) started production in 2019.

Update: It seems we were mistaken, this prototype is not a hybrid QD-OLED, but a 'regular' OLED. This is still an impressive development - a rollable inkjet-printed OLED display.

TCL and Juhua Printing demonstrated a 31" FHD inkjet-printed rollable hybrid QD-OLED TV prototype. The display uses an IGZO (Oxide-TFT) backplane and TCL says that it has an aperture ratio of over 50%, brightness of 200 nits and a 90% DCI-P3 color gamut.

TCL's hybrid display technology (which TCL calls H-QLED) uses a blue OLED emitter coupled with red and green QD emitters. All three emitter materials are combined and printed using ink-jet printing technology.