1. Home
    2. » Samsung OLED

Samsung OLED company spotlight

OLED is an emerging display technology that is fast becoming the mainstream display technology in many markets, as OLED enables display panels that offer the best image quality and free design as they can be made flexible and transparent. The Samsung OLED displays are considered to be the best in the industry and the Korean company is the clear lead in AMOLED production for mobile devices.

SDC 5.7'' FHD rollable OLED at SID 2016

Over the pay years Samsung invested billions of dollars in OLED research and production facilities as the company sees OLEDs fast replacing LCD displays in all mobile applications.

Samsung AMOLED displays

Samsung is currently producing over 300 million AMOLED displays in a year, used mostly in smartphones - such as Samsung's own Galaxy S7 (and S7 edge ) - but also in smartphones from Gionee, Meizu, Acer, HP, Vivo, Microsoft, Lenovo, ZTE, Hisense, Konka and others. Samsung also produces large mobile OLEDs for tablets, laptops and monitors.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge photoSamsung Galaxy S6 Edge

In August 2013 Samsung launched the company's first OLED TV, the KN55S9C, which used a curved 55" OLED panel. The TV was priced at around $8999 in the US and Korea, but is no longer in production, and was never in real mass production. Samsung has yet to return to OLED TV production.



Samsung flexible OLED displays

Following its initial flexible OLED production launch in 2013, and the huge success of its edge-type phones, Samsung is currently producing around 9 million flexible OLEDs each month to satisfy demand for the Galaxy S7 edge and its other flexible OLED products. Samsung has reportedly been chosen to supply 100 million flexible OLED panels to Apple's future iPhones.

Future Samsung OLED devices

Samsung is developing several next generation display technologies based on OLEDs. Samsung has been developing a foldable OLED device for a long time - which may dramatically change the mobile device market as it could enable smartphone to turn into tablets or phones that can be folded into smaller devices.

Samsung is also developing transparent OLEDs (see the company's 55" FHD transparent and mirror-type OLEDs here) for retail application, and also readies next generation displays for the automotive industry.

Several years ago Samsung released the following video, showing a concept transparent flexible AMOLED tablet device. It will be years before Samsung can commercialize such a display, but it's nice to see what the future holds:

Further reading

Latest Samsung OLED news

Samsung Electronics is looking to develop its own ulta-thin glass cover for foldable smartphones

Samsung Electronics's 2nd foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z Flip, sports an ultra-thin glass cover, which replaced the polyimmide one used in its previous foldable, the Galaxy Fold. The UTG glass cover is produced by Korea-based Dowoo Insys, who processes Schott's ultra thin glass.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip photo

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung Electronics wants to develop its own UTG cover, as it feels the Dowoo Insys UTG is still not robust enough and the company also wants to increase production yields and reduce costs. SE is already in talks with several glass suppliers for this project.

Read the full story Posted: Apr 04, 2020

Samsung Display to stop all LCD production by the end of 2020

Reuters reports that Samsung Display has decided to stop all LCD production by the end of 2020. The company will continue to support it current customers without any issues.

SDC has two LCD production lines in Korea. One of these will be converted to next-generation QD-OLED TV panels (in a $10.8 billion investment announced in October 2019). According to Reuters, the second line will also be converted to QD-OLED in the future. SDC did not yet decide what will it do with its two LCD production lines in China.

Read the full story | 1 comment | Posted: Apr 01, 2020
Transparent OLEDs Market Report

LG's iPhone display orders propel its OLED smartphone market share to over 10% in Q4 2019

Towards the end of 2019 LG Display started to supply Apple with 6.1" film-touch OLED flexible displays for its 2020 iPhone, and IHS Markit now says that these shipments propelled LGD's OLED smartphone market share to 10.8% in Q4 2019 (up from only 2.1% in Q3 2019).

Apple iPhone 11 Pro photo

In fact LGD now says that mobile OLED revenues make up for 36% of its total revenues in Q4 - which is higher than its OLED TV revenues for the first time ever.

Read the full story Posted: Mar 12, 2020

A Q&A with Cynora's CEO, to discuss the company's new blue emitter

OLED material developer Cynora recently announced its first commercial product, the cyBlueBooster fluorescent blue emitter that is 15% more efficient that current fluorescent blue emitters on the market.

Cynora cyBlueBooster OLED closeup photo

This was a very interesting announcement, and Cynora's CEO Adam Kablanian was kind enough to answer a few questions we had to help understand the new material and Cynora's current business and latest technology.

Read the full story Posted: Mar 05, 2020

SDC expects demand for foldable OLEDs to soar, will increase production capacity to a million panels per month

Korean ETNews reports that Samsung is expecting higher demand for foldable OLED displays, and the company decided to increase its monthly production capacity from 260,000 units to around 600,000 by the end of May 2020, and over a million displays by the end of the year.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip photo

ETNews also reports that Samsung Electronics is planning to launch its third foldable smartphone later in 2020, and Chinese phone makers are also requesting foldable displays from SDC.

Read the full story Posted: Mar 05, 2020

Samsung Display announced new high-efficiency smartphone AMOLED displays

Samsung Display announced that it developed a new AMOLED smartphone display, optimized for 5G smartphones, that features a reduction of 15% in its power consumption compared to SDC's previous OLEDs. The new display also features the lowest blue-light emission in the industry - 6.5%.

SGS 6.5% blue light emission, Samsung 5G OLED photo

Samsung did not explain how it managed to achieve the new reduction in power consumption - this is likely to be the result of new OLED materials. Samsung also does not explain how exactly these new OLEDs are optimized for 5G smartphones exactly - except for saying that these new displays are an excellent choice due to their high image quality, low power consumption and eye-protective functionality (low blue light).

Read the full story | 1 comment | Posted: Mar 01, 2020

SDC: our ultra-thin glass is more durable than polyimide for foldable OLEDs

Earlier this month Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Flip, its 2nd foldable smartphone - and the 6.7" 1080x2636 inward foldable HDR "Dynamic AMOLED" display uses a flexible glass cover, as opposed to SDC's previous foldable OLEDs that used a flexible polyimide cover.

Samsung UTG logo

Samsung now says that it is branding its ultra-thin-glass foldable OLEDs as Samsung UTG. I'm not sure what to say regarding Samsung's slogan "Tough, yet Tender" which seems to be taken out of a completely different industry.

Read the full story Posted: Feb 26, 2020

DisplayMate: Samsung's Galaxy S20 Ultra OLED is an impressive display - the best ever mobile display

Samsung recently announced its latest flagship phone series, the Galaxy S20. Our display measurement friends from DisplayMate tested the new display - and unsurprisingly it turns out that the new Samsung Display AMOLED displays are very impressive - and they earn DisplayMate's highest ever display performance grade.

Samsung Galaxy S20 lineup

DisplayMate tested the Galaxy S20 Ultra, with its 6.9" 1440x3200 (511 PPI), 120Hz, Dynamic AMOLED display. The display has "close to text book perfect" calibration accuracy and its performance is visually indistinguishable from perfect. The new Samsung OLED display is setting or matching 12 smartphone display performance records.

Read the full story Posted: Feb 18, 2020

Samsung launches its second foldable OLED phone, the Galaxy Z Flip

Yesterday Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Flip, its 2nd foldable smartphone, features a 6.7" 1080x2636 inward foldable HDR "Dynamic AMOLED" display. The external display is a small 1.1" 112x300 Super AMOLED. The Galaxy Z Flip will ship on February 14th, starting at $1,380 in the US.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip photo

Besides the new form factor, the Z Flip uses an ultra-thin glass cover - unlike the Galaxy Fold which used a plastic one. At least according to The Verge, this makes for a big improvement - it feels better, can't easily be "marked-up" by a fingernail and there's no visible crease. The Z Flip also feels much more refined - with no creaking and with a solid-feeling hinge.

Read the full story Posted: Feb 12, 2020

Will Samsung's next foldable phone use ultra-thin flexible glass?

Samsung is working on its next foldable phone, which according to leaks will be called the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. According to XDA's Max Weinbach, the new phone will be use ultra-thin flexible glass, instead of polyimide.

Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 - leaked photo December 2019

In November 2019 Samsung indeed signed an exclusive deal with Korea's Dowoo Insys to supply ultra-thin glass (UTG) for future foldable OLED devices. Samsung is aiming to switch to glass as its current foldable OLEDs which are protected by a plastic cover are highly prone for scratching and are very fragile.

Read the full story Posted: Jan 26, 2020