AMOLED - introduction and market status - Page 12

BOE is now mass producing flexible OLED displays in two production lines, and the company says it has shipped around 40 million OLED displays in the first three quarters of 2021. One of the company's main AMOLED customers is Apple.

A few days ago we reported that BOE started mass producing OLED displays at its 6-Gen B12 production line in Chongqing, China. With the B12 line in full capacity (expected by late 2022 or early 2023), BOE's OLED production capacity will reach 144,000 substrates.

According to a report from China, BOE will produce around 15 million AMOLED panels for Apple in 2021, or about 10% of Apple's total OLED panel orders.

BOE is supplying displays for refurbished iPhone 12 devices, and Apple is now looking into adopting BOE's panels in the iPhone 13. It is likely that the 15 million shipments estimate relies on Apple's approval of BOE's iPhone 13 panels, and even so it might be a bit optimistic that BOE will supply so many panels by year's end.

UK-based OTFT display backplane developer SmartKem announced that it has signed a joint development agreement with Taiwan-based PMOLED-maker RiTdisplay, for the production of OTFT-based AMOLED display prototypes.

SmartKem's technology could enable RiTDisplay to produce AMOLED displays at a lower cost, and, more significantly, to use its own PMOLED production line without the large investment needed for an LTPS AMOLED Line. The current agreement includes a prototype display development, it will have to be seen whether it will be expanded in the future for actual production.

A few days ago Nintendo started shipping its anticipated Switch OLED gaming console, with its 7-inch 1280x720 OLED display. The console costs $349.99, and initial reviews find the display to be an excellent improvement over the LCD used in the previous model.

This is an interesting sub-pixel structure, quite similar to the one used by the Apple Watch - and also to Samsung's S-Stripe displays (for example the one used in the Galaxy Note II). This is not Samsung's standard architecture for mobile devices, the Pentile display (or Diamond Pixel structure).

In recent months, the world is suffering from a serious semiconductor component shortage, due to several reasons that all seemed to have join forces - increased demand for IT products due to the pandemic, extreme weather conditions in the US and Asia, the US-China trade war, employee shortages, and the power grid problems that China is facing.

This semiconductor supply and demand crisis is affecting the global OLED industry. Some display makers cannot ship their displays - not because of OLED production problems, but because they cannot get enough driver ICs.

As demand for larger mobile OLED displays, for laptops, tablets and monitors is on the rise, there are reports that Samsung Display is considering building a 8.5-Gen AMOLED fab dedicated for laptop and IT displays. SDC is developing technologies to overcome the limitation in OLED deposition.

According to a new report from Korea, China's BOE and CSoT are both looking to also establish 8-Gen OLED production lines. BOE is accelerating its plans for a 2200x2500 (8-Gen) OLED deposition line, and is developing deposition technologies towards that goal. BOE's main target is to produce smartphone OLED displays, which it hopes to supply to Apple.

Reports from Korea suggest that Apple has decided to delay its iPad OLED launch to 2023, and the company canceled its current joint development project with Samsung Display.

SDC aimed to develop a 10.86 AMOLED display for Apple's iPad. According to earlier reports, Apple wanted SDC to developed a tandem stack structure to improve the OLED device lifetime and brightness - and also to reduce burn-in problems. Apparently SDC is not ready to start tandem OLED production next year, and Apple will not accept a single-stack OLED for tablet applications.

Our friends at DisplayMate posted an in-depth technical review of the iPhone 13 Pro Max display. The 6.7-inch 1284x2778 10Hz-120Hz 1200 nits LTPO AMOLED receives DisplayMate's highest display performance grade of A+.

DisplayMate says that the new display outperforms the display adopted by Apple in last year's iPhone 12 Pro Max. The iPhone 13 Pro display's new adaptive 120Hz refresh rate which results in a 25% boost to power efficiency. The new display is also brighter by 27% and enjoys a higher absolute color accuracy. The size of the notch was also reduced by 20%.

Apple introduced its latest iPhones, with four models, all featuring AMOLED displays. We'll start with the iPhone 13 which features a 6.1" Super Retina 1200 nits 1170x2532 (460 PPI) AMOLED display. The iPhone 13 mini offer similar specifications, with a 5.4" 1080x2340 1200 nits AMOLED (476 PPI) displays.

The iPhone 13 Pro features a higher-end 6.1" 1170x2532 (460 PPI) 10Hz-120Hz 1200 nits LTPO AMOLED display, and the iPhone 13 Pro Max gets a larger 6.7-inch 1284x2778 (258 PPI) LTPO AMOLED.

Samsung Display has demonstrated a new stretchable AMOLED display. The 13-inch panel (we do not know the resolution) was shown in a unique 3D demo.

The idea behind the demo is that the panel reacts to the video content (flowing lava), so it changes the height of parts of the screens to make the experience more realistic, a sort of volumetric display.