The Holst Center posted this short video showing how their flexible OLED lighting panel prototypes work under water, virtue of their thin-film protective barrier:
DisplaySearch released their 2012-2016 global TV market forecasts. They have reduced OLED TV shipments to just 500 units in 2012 and 50,000 in 2013. Meanwhile, 4K2K LCD TVs are expected to grow from 4,000 units in 2012 to 154,000 in 2013. However, DisplaySearch predicts that OLED TV growth will pickup soon afterwards to reach 9 million units in 2016:
Chimei Innolux (CMI), the Taiwanese display maker decided to change its name back to Innolux. CMI was established in 2009 in taiwan as a merger between Innolux, CMO and TPO (both had active OLED programs). CMI is working on small and medium OLED panels with plans to start low-volume production in Q4 2012.
IHS DisplayBank say that AMOLED shipments grew 8% in the second quarter of 2012, after decreasing slightly (2.5%) in the first quarter. Total shipments in Q2 were a little over 35 million units. Average size and price increased by about 1% of Q1.
DisplayBank says that Samsung is still the main supplier with over 90% of shipments, and this is not really news. They say that LG Display faced low demand from their main customers (LGE and Nokia).
Google unveiled their new tablet (the Nexus 10, made by Samsung) and phone (the Nexus 4, made by LG) - and both use LCDs (yeah, those OLED rumors were incorrect after all). The Nexus 10 uses a 10", 2560x1600 (300 ppi) "True RGB Real Stripe PLS" display (PLS stands for Plane to Line Switching, a Samsung-developed tech which is supposed to be brighter and with better viewing angles than IPS panels).
The Nexus 4 uses a 4.7" 1280x768 IPS display (probably made by LG Display). This is the first Google Nexus phone that does not have an AMOLED display. What a shame.
AUO had to delay AMOLED mass production to 2013, but the company is still developing the technology. Today they unveiled a new 4.65" AMOLED that features 317 ppi (so the resolution is probably around 1280x720). This is quite an improvement over AUO's current 4.3" qHD (257 ppi) panels.
AUO also unveiled some other new technologies today: A 4.46" LCD with the "World's thinnest bezel" at 1mm, New AHVA (Advanced Hyper-Viewing Angle) panel technology and a 10" 2560x1600 IGZO based LCD aimed for tablets that is only 1.5mm thick. This is the size and resolution of Google's upcoming Nexus 10 tablet - and perhaps the new device will use this display and not a Super AMOLED as some leaks suggested. Update: the Nexus 10 is official, and it uses a PLS LCD...
Update: the Nexus 10 is official, and it uses a PLS LCD...
Google is planning to unveil new products on October 29th, and new rumors suggest that this will be a samsung-made Nexus 10 tablet, and it will sport a 10.1-inch Super AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2560Ã1600 (which means 298.9 ppi). If true, this will be the largest AMOLED panel produced by Samsung ever. Hopefully we'll know soon!
The rest of the specification, according to the leak: a 1.7Ghz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of memory and no expansion slot.
Samsung reported good financial results for Q3 2012 - $5.97 billion net income over $47.5 billion in revenues. Samsung saw good growth in smartphones sales and consumer electronics. Samsung reports continued strong growth in the OLED segment - led by sales increase of OLED panels to high-end smartphones due to new product launches.
Back in September we posted that AUO managed to achieve 50% yield in its AMOLED fab, and is set to start mass production. Now we hear from AUO's vice president Dagang Wu that the company is still facing technical issues and will have to delay mass production to 2013. Hopefully this means early 2013. AUO is optimistic that AMOLED will start replacing LCDs in mobile phones starting in 2013 (or 2014).
AUO hoped to start AMOLED mass production in Q3 2012 (which was also a delay from the original plan). AUO will make 4.3" qHD panels (257 ppi), and according to some industry insiders AUO already signed up HTC, Asus and possible Sony for those panels.
LG Display is still suffering from low yields (and low uniformity) in their OLED TV pilot line (M1) and they had to delay launching these TVs (originally planned for June 2012), but that didn't stop LG's chairman from deciding to devote the company's main R&D resources towards OLED TVs development. Now we hear that LG Display actually decided to start building a mass production line (called M2) - which will become fully operational in Q1 2014 with a capacity of 32,000 substrates monthly - or about 180,000 55" OLED TV panels in a month (assuming 100% yield, so obviously the real number will be lower).
LGD is expected to start placing equipment orders during the next quarter - and in fact the company already sent letters of intent (LOI) to some companies. The company will officially announce this investment plan "any day now". The M2 line will be able to process the evaporation and encapsulation on a full substrate (in the M1 pilot line the substrate is cut in half before those steps).
