According to ETNews, LG display aims to start producing OLED panels for computer monitors and laptops. LG wants to diversify their OLED product lineup, and this seems like a logical next step. ETNws estimates that the first monitors will be released in 2016 or 2017.

Samsung 12.1 inch laptop prototype, 2009

LG Display is currently focused to solve the burn-in problem inherent with OLEDs which is a problem with monitors. LG also sees blurred-images on their OLEDs when used with different image sizes and monitor frequencies and has to solve that as well. LGD will first produce monitor panels and notebooks will come next as prices will have to be lower for that market segment.

An OLED-Info reader recently raised the question - where are the OLED laptops and OLED monitors? This is an interesting question. Samsung currently produces AMOLEDs ranging in size from 1.63" for wearables to 10.5" tablet displays and LG Display is mass producing 55", 65" and even 77" OLED TVs.

Samsung 12.1 inch laptop prototype, 2009

It seems that technically there shouldn't be a problem producing 13-15 inch OLED panels for laptops or even 20-25 inch panels for monitors. In terms of pixel density, these panels will be simpler to make compared to Samsung's mobile phone panels. Even a 13" 4K laptop panel will require only 339 PPI - much lower than SDC's latest 5.1" QHD panels (577 PPI). And of course SDC can start with a 15" FHD panel (146 PPI) which is easier to produce.

A couple of months ago Ignis Innovation announced that they began producing some 55" OLED TV evaluation samples for display makers to test their MaxLife compensation technology. Now the company finally started shipping orders to customers (display makers and OEMs). Ignis hopes that display makers will adopt their technology for TV, mobile and tablet OLED displays.

According to IGNIS, this panel offers the world's lowest power consumption (20% lower than LG and Samsung's current OLED TVs), longest lifetime (a significant boost over existing OLED panels) and their technology can improve production yield and so lower production costs.

Last month Ignis Innovation announced that they began producing some 55" OLED TV evaluation samples for display makers to test their MaxLife compensation technology. The company now tells us that the first sample panel arrived at their offices, and they will start fulfilling orders (to display makers and OEMs) in about two weeks.

The company did some initial measurements, and they say that this panel offers the world's lowest power consumption (20% lower than LG and Samsung's current OLED TVs), longest lifetime (a significant boost over existing OLED panels). The panels are highly uniform (much better than the OLED TVs no the market).

The US PTO published a new patent from Apple (filed in 2012) that describes how to use sensors to compensate for ambient lighting (see DisplayMate's related recent article) and lifetime brightness degradation in OLED displays. The patent describes that photo-diodes can be placed inside the OLED array or above and below it.

Putting photo-diodes inside the display will enable them to more accurately measure light levels. So if a part of the screen is dimmer than the rest of the screen (for example because only a part of the display is under direct light) - the photodiode will detect it and then the display brightness in that area can be increased. This is something that cannot be achieved with a single sensor. Those photodiodes can also be used to learn whether certain OLED pixels (or pixel groups) have lowered brightness due to aging. Then the display can compensate and drive these pixels higher.

Back in June 2012 I reported from SID on Ignis' Max Life technology. Max Life provides external compensation - that deals with OLED burn-in. The idea is to keep track of how much each pixel was used, and so it's possible to calculate the brightness loss in that particular pixel, and then drive this particular pixel correctly - to compensate. Ignis now released a nice video showing a 20" AMOLED panel (their own a-Si prototypes made by RiTDisplay) with a burn-in logo. When Max Life is turned on, the logo disappears:

Ignis explains that while Max Life theoretically makes the "eventual" lifetime (until the display burns out completely) worse, in practice it helps to make the device usable longer. Ignis says that the main problem is non-uniformity in brightness and not actual brightness.

As I already said before, Ignis Innovation's SID booth was one of the conference highlights for me. Their technology is very impressive and hopefully will enable cheaper non-LTPS AMOLED production.

In their booth, Ignis were showing 3.5" and 20" AMOLED panels that use the company's a-Si backplane compensation technology. The panels were made by RiTdisplay. Ignis and RiTdisplay have been showing these displays back in 2011. Originally they were supposed to be released towards the end of 2011, but this never happened. During SID Ignis announced that now the plan is to release these by the end of 2012. According to Ignis the 3.5" AMOLED will be cheaper than the LTPS-based competition (i.e. Samsung made panels). You can read more about these panels and RiTdisplay's plans at my RiTdisplay-at-SID-2012 post.

Update: we learned that RiTDisplay have started to mass produce those AMOLEDs and have already found some smartphone clients.

IGNIS Innovation, unveiled a new 3.47" 320x480 AMOLED made on an amorphous silicon backplane (a-Si). The new display uses INGIS' new AdMo compensation technology and is made by RiTdisplay.

Today all AMOLEDs are made on LTPS backplanes. Ignis' solution uses a-Si which is cheaper but has stability issues. Ignis says that their new AdMo technology eliminates those issues - and makes the a-Si made AMOLED equivalent in performance to LTPS AMOLEDs. Ignis says that "This opens the door for RiTdisplay and other manufacturers to make state-of-the-art AMOLED displays using existing amorphous silicon equipment" - but they haven't announced when and if RiTDisplay (or other companies) plan to start using the technology.