LG Display is one of the two companies that lead the OLED industry, and the Korean display maker recently announced a major shift in focus from LCD displays to OLEDs. We conducted a short interview with an official from LGD regarding the company's OLED business goals and aims.

Q: LGD's CEO recently gave a very exciting speech regarding OLEDs, as the company shifts its focus towards OLEDs. What made you take that decision? How do you see the OLED TV market evolving in the next few years?

Market competition is getting fiercer with Chinese manufacturers rapidly catching up in terms of technology and capacity. In response, we recognize that differentiation in product and technology is essential to growth and maintaining leadership in the display industry.

IHS says that AMOLED material consumption will increase dramatically starting in the second half of 2015 as LG Display increase WRGB (WOLED) OLED TV panel production. The market will more than threefold - reaching $165 million in H2 2015, up from $58 million in H1.

IHS forecasts that the WOLED material market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 79% from 2014 to 2019, to reach over $1.25 billion. The whole AMOLED materials market will grow at 54%, from $658 million in 2015 to $2 billion in 2019 (at a CAGR of 37%).

eMagin, the OLED microdisplay maker, reported their financial results for Q1 2015 - the company generated $6 million in revenue (down from $6.3 from last year) and with higher gross margin and lower expenses, they managed to turn a profit of $300K - after seven quarters of operating losses.

eMagin XGA096 OLED-XL

eMagin started to ship their ultra high brightness WUXGA displays, and also started to ship VGA displays globally (these are eMagin's lowest cost displays ever). eMagin also reports advances in direct-patterned OLEDs, and they completed development of its recently announced microdisplay-based HMD and demonstrated it to potential customers.

According to Korean site ETNews, Samsung Display decided to re-enter the OLED TV market. The Korean display maker reportedly finds it difficult to make a profit from the competitive LCD business (some reports suggest that SDC aims to split the OLED and LCD business soon).

Interestingly, the reports suggest that Samsung aims to use a WRGB architecture - like LG uses in their own OLED TVs, and unlike the direct-emission used in Samsung's small display and first-generation OLED TVs. The WRGB (white OLED with color filters and four sub pixels) was originally developed at Kodak, and then bought by LG back in 2009.

eMagin reported their financial results for Q4 2014. Revenues were $6.7 million (up 10% from Q4 2013), and operating loss was $1.6 million (down from $3.3 million in Q4 2013). eMagin has $6 million in cash balance, and the company expects revenues in 2015 to be $26-29 million.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

eMagin reports good progress with their high-brightness direct-emission microdisplays, the HMD product they are developing in-house and the new backplane technology that is expected to cut power consumption by 30%.

During an investor conference call, Universal Display revealed some new details on LG Display's flexible OLED program. According to UDC, LGD's current production capacity in its 4.5-Gen fab is 14,000 monthly substrates, more than double its capacity (6,000 substrates/month) that was reported in the middle of 2014.

LGD indeed said they expect to double their capacity towards the end of 2014, and that's great news. Some of that capacity will go to LG's own flexible products (such as the G Flex 2 and the G Watch R) - and reportedly also to support Apple's Watch which will launch in April.

In July eMagin announced they expect to receive a number of new R&D contracts, and now the company announced three new R&D project wins, worth a total of $6.8 million.

The first project is a $1.1 million contract over 15 months to further enhance the brightness of eMagin's ultra-high-brightness full-color microdisplay. The second project ($4.9 million, 30 months) and the third ($800,000 over 11 months) involved a new manufacturing technology that eMagin will detail in the near future.

CNet posted an interesting interview with LG's Global Communication Director, Ken Hong. Ken says that their OLED TV production yields are over 80% now - and it's all thanks to the WRGB technology they bought originally from Kodak. Ken says that LG has a large lead over competitors - and they do not expect anyone to catch up for at least 2-3 years.

Ken further says that consumers are ready for OLED TVs now. He says that other makers cannot produce OLED TVs with reasonable yields and this is why they say consumers are not ready. At the current price point, LG's job is to educate consumers why they should spend a premium on OLED technology.

eMagin, the OLED microdisplay maker, reported their financial results for Q2 2014. Revenues were $7 million (the same as in Q2 2013), while net loss was $1 million (the same again as in Q2 2013).

eMagin XGA096 OLED-XL

While the company's financial results are still not very impressive, they do report significant advances in their R&D programs, mainly for ultra high-brightness displays and direct-patterned panels. In the near term, they hope that new R&D projects will help them increase revenues. In the long term, they seem certain that the advantages of direct-emission displays will enable them to achieve design wins in future commercial wearable devices such as HMDs.

Since they launched the world's first OLED TV in August 2013, LG managed to slash the price from $14,999 to about $4,000 (currently the EA9800 costs $4,299 in Amazon.com). We all hope LG will continue to lower the price, obviously, so it's good to hear that LGD's Byeonggyu Roh says that they will continue to reduce the cost of their OLED TV panel production.

According to UBI Research, LGD ultimate goal is to reach a price premium of only 10% over LCDs. LG needs to lower the costs across the board - taking advantage of existing LCD lines and equipment, optimizing the thickness of all th display layers (TFT, organic materials and encapsulation), improving the production process times and more.