OLEDs for laptops - introduction and industry news. - Page 16

Lee Min-Cheol, Samsung Electronic's PC Marketing VP says that Samsung is collaborating with "display makers" (Samsung Display? or an error in the quote?) to develop OLED laptops with foldable displays. Samsung says that it aims to bring "new value and user experience" and not just create a laptop and can simply fold in and out.

Samsung will hopefully release its first foldable smartphone device by the end of 2018 or in early 2019, but apparently the company is already thinking about other form factors. Earlier this month a report from Korea suggested that LG Display is collaborating with Lenovo to develop a 13" foldable tablet, with aims to start panel production in H2 2019.

DSCC updated its forecast for display equipment spending, saying that in 2018 OLED spending is expected to fall 28% compared to 2017 to $10.8 billion (while LCD spending will grow 22% to $11.4 billion). China-based display makers will account for 90% of all display related equipment spending in 2018.

2019 will see another down year for OLED spending that will drop 31% to $7.4 billion (LCD spending is also expected to fall by 32%). Chinese display makers will again lead in spending (77% of the market).

In the past few weeks we heard many reports that following lower than expected OLED orders from Apple (due to disappointing iPhone X sales) Samsung Display has suddenly found itself with under utilized OLED production lines.

Samsung already said that it aims to find new customers for its OLEDs, mostly in smartphone makers in China. Some analyst say however that this won't be so easy as the higher costs of SDC's AMOLED displays deter some of its potential customers, who prefer to opt for lower-cost high-end 18:9 LCDs.

Lenovo announced its laptop lineup for 2018, and unfortunately none of these laptops will adopt an OLED display.

Lenovo launched its first OLED laptop in 2016 (the X1 Yoga, with an SDC 14" 2550x1440 AMOLED display) and updated this laptop in 2017 (with the X1 Yoga 2017 edition, with a similar display).

IHS says that AMOLED panel shipment will increase 63% in 2017, driven by strong demand from smartphone makers. Looking forward the AMOLED market will experience fast growth, as demand will rise for smartphones, TVs, VR HMDs and mobile PCs.

In 2017 the AMOLED market will reach $25.2 billion in revenues, up from about $15 billion in 2016. The OLED TV market will grow to 1.5 million units (up from from 890,000 units in 2016). Mobile display resolution continue to increase, and in 2017 68% of shipments will be of FHD, QHD and WQHD resolutions.

Lenovo introduced its X1 Yoga 2017 laptop in early 2017 - and the hybrid tablet / laptop has a 14" 2560 x 1440 display - either an LCD or an OLED. The X1 Yoga 2017 is now shipping - and the OLED version with a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and an intel Core i7 CPU costs $2349.

According to a report in Korea, Samsung Electronics has decided to start adopting OLED displays in all of its tablet devices and to increasingly use OLEDs in laptops.

Samsung Display is currently producing OLEDs for tablets and laptops in a limited quantity, as most of its OLED capacity is dedicated to mobile phone displays. According to ETNews SDC will continue to gradually convert its LCD lines to OLED and the ultimate goal of SDC is to only produce OLED displays for mobile devices.

As was pretty much confirmed by several reports and leaks, Apple introduced its new MacBook Pro 2016 models - which include an OLED Touch Bar instead of the traditional function keys.

The OLED strip is supported by most of Apple's applications and can be used to show bookmarks while you browse the internet, emojis in messaging applications, and more. Apple released an API to developers can support the Touch Bar in third-party applications. The OLED strip also includes a Touch ID sensor that is activated for example when you wish to pay online (on supported web stores).

Tomorrow (October 27th) Apple is set to announce its new MacBook Pro lineup, and reports suggested that one of the new features in these new laptops will be an OLED touch bar, a secondary display placed above the keyboard (instead of the function keys).

A leaked image (shown above) from Apple's Pay platform was circulated yesterday, showing and supposedly confirming the new touch bar (which many believe Apple will call Magic Toolbar) - which will also apparently support touch ID.

Apple is set to announce its new MacBook Pro lineup towards the end of October. In June we reported of rumors that one of the new features in these new laptops will be an OLED touch bar, a secondary display placed above the keyboard (instead of the function keys). You can see a proposed render (this is not an official photo of course):

MacBook Pro render (Source: Martin Hajek)

Since June, more reports surfaced that confirm the secondary-OLED. It seems that most analyst now agree that the MacBook Pro will indeed come with this interesting OLED strip. A leaked Chassis image from June, which you can see above, supports these rumors. I'm sure Apple will find very nice use cases for such a display on a laptop. It is interesting to try and figure out the effect of Apple's secondary MacBook Pro OLED on the OLED market itself.