Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs (MOEA) Shih Yen-shiang says that the local display makers need to work together to deal with weak consumer demand and rising competition. Shih especially wants to help Taiwan's largest display makers - AUO and Chimei Innolux. The MOEA is already in talks with the two companies to help them shift towards OLED production. The government wants to invest money from its National Development Fund (NDF).

AUO transparent OLED prototype

Back in August it was reported that Taiwan's government wants to establish an AMOLED R&D alliance and that AU Optronics (AUO) has volunteered for the plan. AUO was facing technical issues which forced them to delay OLED production, but now the company is already shipping 4" AMOLED samples and mass production will begin in Q2 2012. CMI is facing both technical and financial problems and their OLED plans aren't clear.

Taiwan's government wants to establish an AMOLED R&D alliance, to help local companies compete with AMOLED leader Samsung. Currently it is reported that AU Optronics (AUO) has volunteered for the plan and are in talks with smartphone and PC makers HTC, Acer and Asustek to form the alliance. It's not clear whether other Taiwanese OLED makers (such as Chimei Innolux) will join too.

AUO 14-inch OLED prototype

The Taiwanese goverment will offer financial incentives as they hope this alliance will improve AMOLED yield rate and so help local companies secure customers for the AMOLED panels. AUO is facing technical issues which forced them to delay OLED production. CMI is facing both technical and financial problems and their OLED plans aren't clear.

Chimei Innolux (CMI) had plans to start producing AMOLED, but back June we heard that the company faces both technical and financial difficulties, and later on the company announced it will cut their expenses, although the OLED program will remain. Today we see another report that CMI will indeed reduce capex by about NT$50-60 billion (US $1.7-2 billion) for 2011, but they do plan to continue investing in OLED R&D.

While it's good to hear that the OLED program will not be terminated, we also understand that the company won't start producing AMOLEDs in the near future.

A few weeks ago we updated on CMI's OLED program, which seems to be last advanced than we previously assumed. Today we hear that CMI is indeed facing financial problems. The company decided to cut 2011 expenditure by 20-30%, and focus on its fundamental business - production of TFT panels. CMI will separate the touch panels, LCD modules, systems and packaging into different business units.

The company did note that its AMOLED development is still 'in progress'. Hopefully they'll give us some more details soon.

We've got some interesting updates regarding Chimei Innolux (CMI) OLED program. As a reminder, CMI was born as a merger between Innolux, CMO and TPO. Both CMO (through its CMEL subsidiary) and TPO had active OLED programs, and CMEL were even producing panels up until the merger. CMI's own OLED plans are still unclear.

Back in February 2011 we reported that CMI indeed plans to start producing OLEDs in two plants - a Gen-3.5 (620x750mm) LTPS/OLED Plant in Jhunan, Taiwan and a Gen-5.5 (1,300x1,500) IGZO-TFT plant in Tainan (also in Taiwan). Later on there were reports that CMI actually scrapped all OLED plans for now. But in March the company unveiled a couple of new AMOLED prototypes (3.2" and 3.5", shown above).

Last week we reported that Chimei Innolux are showing AMOLED panels at FPD China 2011 (which is good news as we're still not sure whether Chimei Innolux (CMI) is producing AMOLED panels or not). We now have more information on those panels. There are two panels on show: a 3.2" (320x480) and a 3.5" (360x64).

CMI are calling those displays TrueOLED, but apparantly they use a white-OLED with color filters design. This is the same method that was developed by Kodak (and now LG owns that technology). This includes a white subpixel (with no filter) to enhance brightness. Other features of those panels: 300cd/m²brightness, 30,000:1 contrast ratio, 160° viewing angles and 100% color gamut for the 3.2" panel (87% for the 3.5" one).

We're still not sure whether Chimei Innolux (CMI) is producing AMOLED panels or not - but according to Digitimes the company is showing AMOLED panels at FPD China 2011. This seems to be a good sign.

According to their financial presentation, CMI has two OLED plants planned (A Gen-3.5 LTPS in Jhunan and a Gen-5.5 IGZO-TFT fab in Tainan).

Update: According to a different report, which makes more sense, Sintek will only supply touch-panels for Samsung AMOLEDs, and will not produce actual AMOLED displays. Sintek will indeed setup a Gen-5.5 plant to produce the touch panels. Update 2 - Digitimes posted a new story correcting their earlier report.

According to Digitimes, Sintek Photronics will supply touch panels for Samsung Mobile Display to be used in AMOLED panels. Digitimes also say that Sintek will setup a new Gen-5.5 LTPS line (scheduled to start production in Q4 2011) to supply backplanes for Samsung. The new plant will produce 50,000 monthly substrates. This will grow to 80,000 later.

According to the article, Samsung will start AMOLED production in their own Gen-5.5 only in Q2 2012. This is strange as we know that Samsung will start production during 2011. In their post, Digitimes also say that LG Display will start production in Q1 2012 (according to our sources, LG already started production). It seems that Digitimes thinks that all AMOLED plants will be delayed by one year (or maybe this is simply a mistake by Digitimes?).

Two days ago we published a story saying that Chimei Innolux seems to be producing AMOLEDs again. We got just word (from a trusted source) that the company actually plans to scrap all OLED plans, and shift all LTPS capacity back to LCD.

This is strange as it seems the company is still recruiting AMOLED engineers and researchers. Perhaps they will shift the current Gen-3.5 OLED plant to LCD, but they still have plans to make AMOLEDs in the future (in the Gen-5.5 plant in Tainan, as stated in the company's presentation).

Back in December 2009, Chimei bought both TPO and CMO (and its CMEL OLED subsidiary). It wasn't clear what will happen to TPO and CMEL's OLED programs. CMEL had an active AMOLED program and even offered 7.6" panels, but production halted after the merger. TPO was said to develop small (3" and 4") AMOLEDs but had technical difficulties. Now we found out that Chimei Innolux is back into AMOLED production. In their 3Q 2010 financial results presentation they list their Fab status:

There are two OLED plants. The first is a Gen-3.5 (620x750mm) LTPS/OLED Plant in Jhunan, Taiwan targeting small/medium displays. There's also a Gen-5.5 (1,300x1,500) plant in Tainan (also in Taiwan). The Gen-5.5 line will produce OLEDs for monitors or TVs. The new OLEDs in the Gen-5.5 line will use an IGZO (InGaZnOx) TFT - a transparent amorphous oxide semiconductor.