OLED is an emerging display and lighting technology that enables beautiful and efficient displays and lighting panels. Thin OLEDs are already being used in many mobile devices and TVs.
LG Display - pOLED displays
LG Display is one of the leaders in OLED production. LG Display started producing flexible OLEDs for mobile devices in 2015, initially focusing on small wearable OLEDs - for devices such as Apple's Watch and LG's own wearables.
In October 2017, following a large expansion in LGD's AMOLED production capacity, LG Display started to produce large flexible OLEDs for smartphones. This is when LGD also started to brand its OLED displays as pOLEDs (p is for plastic). LGD now provides its pOLED displays for several smartphone vendors, including Apple.
LGD pOLED production fabs
LG Display has several flexible OLED production fabs. The first one was a pilot 4.5-Gen line, with limited capacity - and so the E2 line is used to produce LGD's flexible wearable OLED displays.
LG Display's second pOLED fab is is its E5 line in Gumi, which has a monthly capacity of 7,500 monthly 6-Gen substrates (or about 1.5 million 5.5" panels at 100% yields). LG Display's thoird line is the E6 line in Paju which is another 6-Gen line, but with a larger capacity of 15,000 monthly substrates.
LG's fourth flexible OLED line may be built at the company's large P10 display production complex in Paju. The P10 will be a large display complex with a total investment of close to $10 billion - but will mostly produce OLED TV panels. It could include a flexible OLED line, but LG's plans are not finalized yet, its seems.
pOLED vs PLED
pOLED is LG Display's brand name for mobile flexible AMOLED displays. Somewhat confusingly, PLED, also called P-OLEDs, are Polymer-based OLED materials - a class of materials pioneered by CDT (now owned by Sumitomo) that can be used to create OLEDs (most OLEDs today use Small Molecule OLED materials). For more on PLEDs, see here.
Further reading
The latest LG pOLED news:
LG Display plans to ship over 6 million OLED TV panels in 2020, says first pOLED-equipped car to launch in Q2 2020
LG Display says that it aims to ship over 6 million OLED TV panels in 2020 - that's double what it shipped in 2019. The company also says that it expects its Guangzhou fab starts mass producing panels in Q1 2020, earlier than previous estimated.
Previous estimates, by LG and others, were for around 5.5 million panels in 2020, even before the Guangzhou fab delays. It's possible that LG aims to ship more panels - but some of these will be smaller in size (the new 48-inch panels the company is starting to produce).
LGD to showcase new automotive, aerospace and consumer OLED technologies at CES 2020
LG Display announced that it will demonstrate several new OLED technologies at CES 2020 in Las Vegas next week (January 7-10).
First up, LG Display will show new applications for the aerospace market - including 55" transparent and flexible OLEDs used in airplane cabins. LG will also demonstrate a 65" bendable OLED TV, suitable for first-class cabins, that enable users to adjust the curvature of the TV to create a more immersive experience when required. It seems as if interest in OLEDs is increasing in the aerospace industry.
Huawei's next flagship phone, the Mate 30 Pro, to sport flexible OLEDs made by Samsung and LG
Huawei's Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro smartphones, released in September 2019, sported AMOLED displays made by Samsung Display (rigid 6.62" 1080x2340) and BOE (flexible 6.53" 1176x2400, the Mate 30 Pro).
According to a report from Korea, Huawei will soon launch its next flagship phones, the Mate 40 and Mate 40 Pro - and the flexible OLEDs used in the Mate 40 Pro will be supplied by Samsung and LG Display (50% split). This is an interesting achievement by the Korean OLED makers and likely quite a blow for BOE. Apparently BOE could not match Huawei's requirement for this curved OLED display.
Motorola announces the Razr 2019 clamshell foldable LGD AMOLED phone
Motorola announced the Razr 2019, a clamshell-style smartphone that features a 6.2" 2142x876 (21:9) foldable AMOLED display that folds inside. There's also a regular external 2.7" 600x800 AMOLED used when the phone is closed.
This seems, at least to me, to be a beautiful design which may appeal to more consumers compared to the larger foldable phones we have seen until today that open up to a tablet-style device. The Razr is also the cheapest foldable OLED phone yet announced at $1,500 (it will ship in January 2020).
Google announces its latest Pixel smartphones with OLED displays
Update: Google has removed the P-OLED brand name from their web site - this could have been a mistake, and now we do not know whether these are LGD's displays or not.
Google announced its fourth-generation Android smartphone, the Google Pixel 4, that features a 90Hz 5.7" 1080x2280 (444 PPI) OLED. The Pixel 4 XL features a larger 90Hz 6.3" 1440x3040 (537 PPI) AMOLED display.
Display measurement experts DisplayMate reviewed the display and found that it is a state-of-the-art flexible OLED display that sets or matches several records, including the highest absolute color accuracy, the lowest screen reflectance and the smallest brightness variation with viewing angle.
A report from Korea suggests that LGD will produce 10% of Apple's next-gen iPhone OLEDs displays
According to a report from Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, LG Display has passed Apple's quality requirements and has started to produce AMOLED displays for Apple's next generation iPhone, to be announced in September.
According to JoongAng Ilbo, Apple aims to ship around 65 million units of its new smartphones, and has contracted LGD to produce between 6 to 7 million panels, around 10% of Apple's total needs. The rest will be produced by Samsung Display. LGD will produce the displays at its E6 production line in Paju, Korea.
LG Display reports its Q2 2019 results, to invest a further $2.5 billion in its P10 OLED TV fab
LG Display announced its unaudited financial results for Q2 2019, and updated on its upcoming OLED projects.
First of all, LGD announced an additional investment of KRW 3 trillion ($2.5 billion) P10 10.5-Gen OLED TV fab in Paju. Last month it was reported that LG display has started to install some of the Oxide-TFT deposition equipment (supplied by Applied Materials and Jusung Engineering). The mass production at the first lines in the P10 fab is expected to begin in 2021. LG Display did not disclose any more details regarding this new $2.5 billion investment plan yet.
Will LG Electronics replace LGD with BOE as its OLED supplier?
According to a new report from Korea, LG Electronics is in talks with China-based BOE to supply OLED panels for future smartphones -and replace LGE's current supplier - it's sister company LG Display.
The report suggests two reasons for LG's talk with BOE. First is LG's drive to cut costs as its mobile phone business is losing massive amounts of money. The second reason is that LG Display cannot supply enough panels for LG Electronics as it still struggles with low production yields.
LG says its V50 ThinQ 5G pOLED smartphone is off to a great start in Korea
LG Electronics announced that its latest smartphone, the V50 ThinQ 5G is off to a great start, having sold 100,000 units in Korea in the first week following its launch. LGE says that this is more than four times than the sales of its V40 smartphone.
The V50 ThinQ 5G sports a 6.4" 1440x3120 pOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a microSD slot. LG's first 5G smartphone also offers a triple camera setup.
LG to start producing automotive pOLED displays by the end of Q2 2019
LG Display announced that it has shipped over 100 million automotive displays. The area of all the displays the company has produced so far is equivalent to around 1.5 million m2, or 200 football fields. LG is supplying its automotive displays to Daimler Benz, BMW, Hyundai Motors, Toyota, Honda, Tesla, GM, and more.
LGD is currently producing only LCD automotive displays, but the company has been developing pOLED automotive for many years. LGD now says that it will start producing automotive pOLED displays by the end of Q2 2019, in its 6-Gen E5 flexible OLED line in Gumi, Korea.
