According to Trendforce, smartphone brands will increase adoption of AMOLED displays in 2021, which will lead to a 39% market share for AMOLED displays in the total smartphone display market - up from 31% in 2019.
AMOLED displays are increasingly replacing high-end LTPS LCD displays in the high-end part of the smartphone market. The market share of lower-end a:Si LCD is quite stable.
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DSCC published an interesting post that details the production costs of both WOLED and miniLED TV panels. So first of all, it details LG's current costs for producing OLED TVs, as you can see in the chart below. The costs of producing larger 77-inch and 8-3inch panels are significantly larger than the costs of 65-inch and smaller TV panels:
Interestingly, DSCC says that in 2020, the production costs in LG's Guangzhou fab was higher than the costs in LG's Korean OLED TV fab as the yields in Korea are higher - but this will change in 2021 as China has lower costs for depreciation, personnel and more. DSCC estimates that production costs for a 55-inch or 65-inch WOLED panel will be 14% lower in China than in Korea.
Market research company Omdia says that at the end of 2020, 62.8% of all smartphones use OLED panels, while 31.8%, use LCDs (I'm not sure about the rest of the smartphones, maybe some use E Ink displays but not all the rest of the missing 5.4% in Omdia's summary.
Omdia further estimates that SDC's smartphone OLED panel sales will exceed $5 billion in Q1 2021, a 30% increase over Q1 2020.
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BOE has unveiled a new display, a 55" 4K quantum-dots panel, which it calls AMQLED (active-matrix Quantum Dot LED) display. This display uses electroluminescent QD technology - which is similar to OLEDs but with QD emitters. BOE says the display achieves a color gamut of up to 119% NTSC, and a contrast ratio of 1000000:1.
The reports claims that BOE launched this as a commercial product, but the details are not clear. This technology has been under development for many years, but it hasn't reached the performance required by commercial products, so this is a bit puzzling, hopefully we'll learn more soon.
According to UBI Research from Korea, Samsung Display has managed to improve its quantum dots nanorod LED (QNED) technology, and the company aims to start buying production equipment next year.
Apparently SDC's plan is to replace the fluorescent blue emitters in its QD-OLED TV production process, which will of course turn these TV panels into QD-QNED ones.
LG Display announced that its OLED TV panels have received Eco-Product certification from Swiss-based SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance). LG's OLED TV panels have been recognized as eco-friendly products with low emissions of hazardous substances.
SGS evaluated the overall environmental aspects of OLED TV panels and found their environmental friendliness to be especially notable in three categories covering the lowering of indoor air pollutants, the reduction of hazardous substances, and high recyclability.
DSCC says that the high costs of microLED production will limit the adoption of microLED TVs, which are highly expensive, and the technology will remain in the niche of ultra large displays. The market is set to grow from around $25 million in 2020 to $228 million by 2026.
Just for comparison, six years after being commercialization, in 2019 OLED TV revenues were estimated at $2.5 billion.
Market research company DSCC updates its WOLED TV production cost estimates and forecasts. DSCC says that LG is improving the production at its 8.5-Gen production line in Guangzhou and by next year the cost of production in China will be lower than comparable production in Korea - by about 15%. One meaningful technology adopted in China is MMG which enables around 20% cost reduction.
DSCC also estimates that while MiniLED TVs are cheaper to produce compared to OLEDs, the gap is less than 10%, which means that retail prices of MiniLEDs will be pretty much the same as the retail prices of OLED TVs.
