UBI Research estimates that Apple suffers from poor demand for its iPad Pro devices, and the company has reduced its orders from LG Display and Samsung Display. We heard signs of that already back in August.

UBI estimates that LG Display's medium to large sized OLED panels shipments decreased 34% in Q3 2024, compared to the previous quarter. Samsung Display's tablet OLED panel sales dropped 38% in the quarter. Samsung however enjoyed higher sales of automotive OLEDs, which means that its entire medium-to-large sales were flat in the quarter.

Omdia has updated its Apple iPad and Macbook display roadmaps, with new forecasts and information about Apple's OLED adoption plans in its IT product lines. 

According to Omdia, Apple's iPad Mini will get a 8.4-inch LTPS OLED display in 2026. In 2027, Apple will also introduce OLED displays in its iPad Aid models (11-inch and 13-inch). In 2028 Apple will revamp the OLED displays in its iPad Pro models, offering a tandem architecture, polarizer-free OLED design and LTPO backplanes.

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.

Omdia released its latest OLED market forecasts, and the company says the small/medium (1-inch to 8-inch) OLED shipments will surpass one billion for the first time in 2025. 

In the smartphone market, Omdia says that there has been significant growth, mainly driven by Chinese OLED producers (BOE, CSoT, Visionox, Tianma and Everdisplay). In addition to the growth in smartphone displays, OLED are expanding into new applications, including AR/VR and automotive displays.

There's an interesting report from Korea's The Elec that details Visionox's upcoming $7.6 billion 8.6-Gen IT AMOLED production line in Hefei. It turns out that Visionox looks into using its ViP maskless OLED production process, for at least some of the panels at its upcoming V5 line.

The V5 production line will have a capacity of 32,000 monthly substrate, with 16,000 in the first phase. It is estimated that around a quarter of that capacity will use the company's ViP process (which could be good news for Applied, the supplier of the ViP deposition equipment). This could become the world's first production line for maskless AMOLED production.

Researchers from the University of St Andrews, led by Prof. Ifor Samuel, have designed an OLED based communication device that achieves a record data rate of 3.2Gbps.

To realize this achievement, the researchers developed high-speed red, green and blue emitting OLED devices, on a single substrate. Using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), the three OLED devices are emitting at the same time. By selecting fluorescent materials with nanosecond emission lifetimes and little overlap between their emission spectra, the researchers achieved a -6b dB electrical bandwidth of over 100 Mhz. 

According to DSCC, the foldable smartphone display market has declined for the first time in Q3 2024, and the company sees the market entering a flat state in 2024 and 2025. The market has grown fast (at least 40% per year) since 2019, but according to DSCC it will grow only 5% in 2025 and will decline by 4% in 2025. Demand will remain stable at around 22 million units per year.

DSCC says that Samsung is seeing slower than expected demand for its Galaxy Z Flip 6 smartphone, around 10% lower than the Z Flip 5 released in 2023. Almost all of Samsung's demand is in the Korean and Europrean markets. Huawei has also placed lower than expected orders for foldable OLEDs for the second half of 2024, due to the late introduction of the Mate X6 and Pocket 3 devices compared to the 2023 launch dates. The demand for its tri-foldable Mate XT is lower than expected as well.