OLEDs for laptops - introduction and industry news. - Page 12

DSCC posted an interesting post with its latest views and forecasts on the OLED material market. The company expects AMOLED stack material sales to grow at a 18% CAGR in the next five years, from $294 million in 2019 to $2.46 billion in 2024. Compared to its previous estimate, DSCC sees higher sales as demand for OLED TVs and OLEDs in the IT market (tablets and notebooks) is increasing.

DSCC also posted an analysis of LGD's new evo OLED material stack. Compared to LGD's "standard" WOLED stack, the evo adds an emitting green layer to improve the brightness by 20%. This of course adds an extra material cost to the panel price.

The Elec reports that Samsung Display is planning to build a production line for notebook OLEDs, at its A4 factory in Asan, Korea. The Gen-6 production line will have a capacity of 30,000 monthly substrates.

SDC plans to start ordering production equipment in the summer of 2021, which means that the equipment will be installed within the year, or in early 2022. SDC is already producing laptop displays, so it expects the ramp up to be relatively quick.

Samsung Display announced it will start to produce 90Hz OLED laptop displays by the end of the first quarter of 2021. The first display panel to support this new refresh rate will be 14-inch in size

SDC hopes that its new AMOLED display panels will introduce a 'major shift' in the laptop market. It believes that even though a 90Hz display will require a high-end graphics card, consumers will demand the new display as the experience benefits will be impressive. Samsung says that its 90Hz OLEDs will be on par with 120Hz LCDs in terms of moving images blur.

Samsung Display is introducing a new OLED display technology, called "Samsung Blade Bezel" - which includes an under-the-display camera embedded within a laptop display. This enables reducing the bezels:

We have already seen similar technology from Visionox adopted in smartphones - but the performance is disappointing. A few months ago ZTE announced the first smartphone with an under-the-OLED camera - the The Axon 20 5G.

Samsung Display announced that the company plans to introduce more than 10 different AMOLED displays for the laptop market in 2021. The company will launch displays ranging from 13.3-inch to 16-inch to meet customer demand.

Samsung Display started producing 15.6" 4K AMOLED displays in 2019 for the laptop market, which kickstarted the OLED laptop market as several leading makers (including HP, Lenovo and Dell) started to offer high-end OLED laptops. Since then SDC added more OLED laptop displays to its lineup, and other OLED producers (such as EDO and BOE) started to offer laptop panels as well.

DSCC estimates that foldable OLED panel shipments will reach 3.1 million units in 2020, an increase of 454% from 2019. Revenues in 2020 will reach $462 million. DSCC decreased its estimates following the US restrictions on Huawei which prevented the launch of the Mate X2. The market will grow to 94 million panels by 2025 (a CAGR of 97% from 2018).

Samsung is clearly the leading foldable OLED device brand, with a market share of over 80% in the 2020. The two best selling smartphones in 2020 are the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and the Z Fold 2.

In early 2020 Lenovo announced the foldable ThinkPad Fold laptop, and the company is now starting to accept pre-orders for this innovative device which starts at $2,499.

The ThinkPad X1 Fold features a 13.3" 2048x1536 foldable OLED display that is produced by LG Display. LG's collaboration with Lenovo was announced in May 2019 - but interestingly in November 2019 BOE also said that it is collaborating with Lenovo and that it supplied Lenovo with the 13.3" foldable OLED it used in the prototype ThinkPad X1 foldable laptop it demonstrated in May 2019.

Asus announced its new 2020 laptops, with four models that use OLED displays. The convertible laptops, ZenBook Flip S (UX371) and ZenBook Flip 13 (UX363) feature a "NanoEdge" 13.3" UHD AMOLED display. The ZenBook Flip 15 (UX564) is a larger convertible laptop that features a 15-inch 4K OLED NanoEdge display.

The 2020 Asus ZenBook Pro 15 (UX535) is said to be the world's smallest laptop that features a 15.6" 4K OLED display. It also features 10th-generation Intel Core i7 and i5 H-series processors.

During SID Displayweek BOE demonstrated a couple of interesting OLED displays aimed towards monitors and laptops.

The first display you can see in the video is a 49-inch wide (32:9) 3840x1080 240Hz AMOLED gaming monitor display, that features a brightness of 150 nits (500 nits peak) and a 95% DCI-P3 color gamut.

China-based EverDisplay (EDO) has recently started to produce AMOLED displays for tablets and laptops. The first rigid AMOLEDs are a 11" 1728x2368 and 15.6" 3840x2160 4K rigid displays for tablets and laptops. The first flexible ones are a 12.8" 1888x1728 panel for tablet-like devices and a 15.6" 3840x2160 4K flexible AMOLED for laptops.

These new 11", 12.8" and 15.6" AMOLEDs are now available in the OLED Marketplace. This is great news from EDO, as up until now Samsung Display was the exclusive supplier of AMOLEDs for tablets and laptops. If you are interested in this display for your device or new project, contact us now, or check out more information over at the OLED Marketplace.