Japan Display

Exactly one year ago in December 2024, Japan Display announced a strategic partnership with Taiwan-based Innolux and CarUX (Innolux's automotive display company) to bring eLEAP OLED displays to the automotive market. 

Today Innolux's CEO announced that this strategic partnership has been terminated. Innolux explains that the two companies, even after many discussions and plans, have failed to reach a commercial agreement.

Back in July, we reported that Japan Display, who's been in financial problems for many years, has decided to halt its OLED production at its Mobara Fab, its only active OLED production line. JDI was looking for a buyer to take over the fab, and according to reports, it may have found its buyer - China based HKC.  

Originally, JDI planned to finally end production at Mobara by March 2026, but now it may shut down the fab earlier than expected.

In July we reported that Japan Display decided to halt its OLED production at its Mobara Fab, its only OLED production line, by March 2026. As a consequence, the company will no longer supply panels to Apple.

According to reports, Apple will exclusively use LG Display as its smartwatch OLED supplier in 2026. As Apple's expects to increase orders in 2026 by almost 20%, LGD's wearable OLED shipments are expected to increase quite dramatically as it will also take over JDI's share.

Counterpoint (DSCC) released an interesting post, detailing the display industry's capex spending in the near future. Unsurprisingly, OLED technology will contribute the majority share of these investments.

After a long time during which all OLED production was performed using FMM (evaporation and mask) technology, finally we are seeing two competing technologies - photo patterned OLEDs (adopting by Visionox as ViP and JDI as eLEAP), and inkjet printing (adopted by TCL CSoT). According to counterpoint, the price different between FMM and Photo-Patterned, in terms of the investment in equipment, is not dramatic. In fact, the company estimates that it is 8% cheaper to build a photo-patterned production line. Counterpoint admits, though, that it may be a bit early to understand the complete costs involved with such a line.

Japan Display, who's been in financial problems for many years, has decided to halt its OLED production at its Mobara Fab, its only OLED production line. As a consequence, the company will no longer supply panels to Apple. The Mobara fab will end production by March 2026.

Beyond being good news for LG Display (Apple's other main wearable OLED panel supplier), this is a sad ending to JDI's OLED fab. The company been considering moving the production equipment to its Ishikawa LCD line but has apparently decided instead to try and sell the OLED production equipment.

Japan Display announced a new strategic partnership with Taiwan-based Innolux and CarUX (Innolux's automotive display company) to bring eLEAP OLED displays to the automotive market. 

The three companies did not disclose a lot of details, but it seems as in this partnership JDI will produce the eLEAP OLED displays while CarUX will market and sell these displays to its automotive customers. The first display that JDI will produce will be a 32" 1,000 nits 6460x880 (205 PPI) AMOLED display on an HMO (high-mobility oxide) backplane.