Canon

In the past year or so, much have been said about Samsung's plans to build a 8-Gen OLED IT production line, as the company wants to expand its capacity for monitors, laptops and tablet OLED displays.

Samsung plan for a full-cut 8-Gen line

As this is the first such production line, SDC had two ongoing R&D projects: one with Ulvac, that used full-cut vertical OLED deposition, and another with Canon Tokki, that used half-cut horizontal deposition. According to the latest reports from Korea, SDC decided to prioritize the Canon Tokki half-cut project, as the technology is more mature and is more likely to finish as per Apple's roadmap.

Canon announced that the company is looking into entering the OLED materials market. The company says its Fukui Canon Materials subsidiary will take the lead on this project, together with Canon's own R&D team.

Canon did not disclose what kind of OLED materials will be produced, but Canon has some TADF patents and it could look into TADF emitters.

Samsung is developing its QD-OLED TV technology and the company was supposed to hold an investment review committee on April 2019 to decide whether to go ahead with plans to start production soon (mass production by the end of 2020).

However in May we later reported that Samsung decided to delay the production - trial production will begin towards the end of 2020, with real mass production on a new 10-Gen line only at around 2023. A new report from Korea sheds some more light on Samsung's situation.

DSCC says that Q3 2018 was a record quarter for display equipment spending, as sales reached $7.8 billion billion in the quarter - up 13% from Q3 2017. In the quarter five new 6-Gen OLED lines were installed in addition to a 10.5-Gen LCD fab.The top 5 equipment vendors, according to DSCC, were Canon (13.1%), Applied materials (9.6%), Tokyo Electron, Nikon and SFA Engineering.

Despite the record quarter, total display spending will fall 9% in 2018 (to $21.6 billion). OLED equipment spending is expected to drop 44% in 2019 to $7 billion as mobile OLED spending slows. DSCC says that OLED spending will rebound in 2020, and will increase by 50% to reach $10.5 billion. In 2021, DSCC sees OLED spending declining again, and then rebound in 2022.

Samsung Display is developing hybrid QD-OLED TV technology, and according to estimates, the company aims to begin trial production in 2019. It is also estimated that Samsung has several challenges to overcome, but according to new reports from Digitimes, Samsung is aiming to start installing equipment for the new fab as early as December 2018.

The new fab will begin operation in the second half of 2019 - pilot production at first which will be expanded to full scale mass production. The new fab will be built in Samsung's L8 LCD production line in Asan, and will take over one of the two lines currently in operation at the fab. Samsung's initial production capacity will be around 25,000 monthly G8 substrates.

Starting in 2016 or so, the world's leader in OLED vacuum evaporation equipment Canon Tokki, say a surge in OLED orders - which prompted the company to double its production capacity in 2016. But in 2018 the OLED market experienced a strong slump. OLED production started to recover in June 2018, but a recovery in the OLED equipment sector is still not here.

Canon today posted its Q2 earnings, and while profits increased, the company cut its full FY2018 outlook and said that demand for its OLED production equipment is lower than previously expected.

As we just posted, Japan Display has decided to halt its plans to turn its minority stake at JOLED into a majority one, and so JOLED is now seeking external financing to support its plan to start mass producing OLEDs in 2019 at the JDI plant in Nomi, Ishikawa (which currently makes LCDs, but will be shut down towards the end of 2017).

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, JOLED aims to raise 100 billion Yen (almost $900 million) from Japanese companies, and it has already approached Sony, Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon and Sumitomo. If this plans fails JOLED may turn to foreign companies, including Chinese ones.

Japan-based Canon Tokki is considered the world's leader in vacuum evaporation equipment, and the company has a large backlog - reportedly it had to decline orders from several OLED makers as all of its capacity was taken up mostly by Samsung Display and BOE.

The Korea Herald reports that LG Display has now managed to order two 6-Gen deposition systems from Canon Tokki. The price of each system is around $115 million, and it can support up to 15,000 monthly substrates. The first machine will be delivered in December 2017 and the second in February 2018.

As the OLED market is quickly expanding, we see massive investment in production capacity, mainly from Korea and China. According to Reuters, Canon Tokki, the leading vacuum evaporation equipment maker, is experiencing a boom in orders.

Tokki has a large order backlog - worth several years of its current production capacity. According to some reports, Tokki has turned down orders from LG Display recently as Samsung has taken up all of its capacity - and so LG had to order equipment from Tokki's competitors (mainly SFA Engineering and Ulvac).

Canon has been interested in OLED displays for years - they have shown prototype OLED DSLRs back in 2005, they had plans to make their own OLED panels, and they acquried Tokki, which makes OLED manufacturing equipment. Today Canon finally announced their first cameras with OLED displays (which are most likely made by Samsung).