OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 14

TCL subsidiary CSoT is, according to report from Korea, interested in becoming an AMOLED panel supplier for Apple's iPhones.

CSoT has shipped sample panels to Apple, produced at its T4 OLED fab in Wuhan. If Apple's review is positive, CSoT will invest in a demo line for Apple, implementing new technologies required by Apple.

DSCC have released their 2021 and 2022 smartphone OLED shipment estimates. In 2021, DSCC says that 644 million smartphone AMOLED displays were shipped, up 28% from 2020. Our of these 644 million panels, 42% were rigid, 55% were flexible and about 2% were foldable.

DSCC says that it has downgraded its forecast for 2022, as both Honor and Huawei will no longer adopt rigid AMOLEDs in smartphones. Total shipments will reach almost 700 million panels, and all of the growth will come from flexible and foldable panels. In fact rigid smartphone OLED shipments are expected to decline in 2022.

At CES 2022, TCL unveiled a new clamshell foldable phone concept it refers to as TCL Flex V, which the company hopes to commercialize with a relatively low price tag of around $600-$700.

This seems to be an early stage project, but the current prototype shown at CES used an OLED display that looks to be around 6-inch size with a resolution of 1080x2400. There's also a small external display for when the phone is closed. The phone has a Snapdragon 765G chipset and dual cameras on the back.

Samsung Display showed new foldable and rollable OLED device prototypes at CES 2022, using the new Flex branding it launched in November 2021.

So first up with have the Flex Slidable, which is a smartphone type device that opens up to a wider display. The second display is the Flex S which is a foldable device that folds twice, once inwardly and once outwardly, in an "S" shape.

According to reports from China, Visionox has finalized its LTPO R&D project and is now starting to produce LTPO OLED displays. This will enable the company to compete with Samsung and other leading OLED producers for the high-end smartphone display segment.

Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide, or LTPO, is an OLED display backplane technology developed by Apple. LTPO combines both LTPS TFTs and Oxide TFTs (IGZO, Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) to enable variable refresh rate displays, and power savings of up to 15%. LTPO AMOLED displays are widely used today in high-end smartphones and other mobile devices.

As demand for foldable phones is increasing, Samsung Display is reportedly planning to add three more module production lines in Vietnam to expand its capacity. Once these three new lines are added, SDC will have 10 foldable OLED module production lines in Vietnam.

SDC's current monthly foldable OLED module production capacity is around 1.5 million units, and these new lines will expand SDC's capacity to 2 million units. SDC expects to install the new equipment in 2022. This will help the company reach its target of 18 million foldable OLED panel shipments next year.

DSCC says that Q3 2021 was a record quarter for foldable smartphones - with shipments growing 215% from Q2 2021 and 480% from Q3 2020 to reach 2.6 million units. Samsung Electronics controls the market with a 93% share, followed by Huawei (6%).

DSCC expects the growth to continue and shipments in Q4 will reach almost 4 million units. Looking at specific models, the Galaxy Z Flip 3 has a 60% share, followed by the Galaxy Z Fold 3 with a 23% share.

In early 2021 we hoped that by the end of the year, we'll see some commercial rollable OLED smartphones. LG Electronics aimed to be the first company to release such a advice, hoping to launch it in early 2021.

Later in 2021 LG Electronics closed its smartphone business, and the rollable OLED phone project was scrapped. LG is still offering the rollable OLED TV, but this uses a completely different production process, and is extremely pricey (it is likely that LG only shipped a handful of these TVs to date).

According to reports, BOE started mass producing OLED displays at its 6-Gen B12 production line in Chongqing, China. The ramp up is in stages, with the plant expected to reach full production capacity in late 2022 or early 2023.

The reports suggest that the first panels in production now will ship to Oppo for its smartphones. Actual shipments will begin by the end of 2021 (it is likely that actual production volume right now is still low).

UBI Research estimates that Samsung Display will increase its foldable OLED panel production from ~8 million units in 2021 to 18 million panels in 2022. This will enable Samsung Electronics to increase its foldable phone shipments from around 7 million in 2021 to over 14 million in 2022.

As SDC's foldable panel capacity increases, the company will also have to increase is foldable OLED module production capacity, and the UTG glass processing capacity at Dowoo insys. subsidiary.