OLED-Info - Page 29

We spent last week visiting China - mostly around Shanghai. We attended the Printed & Flexible Electronics China 2017 conference, visited both EverDisplay and Visionox to learn more about their OLED products and plans, and also went to Wuxi to see the interesting and quite impressive graphene center over there.

Samsung Display and LG Display are the clear leaders in AMOLED production - for almost 10 years now. But the market is now changing as several new players, mostly in China, are starting to commercially produce AMOLED displays - mostly for mobile phones, wearables and VR headsets.

A couple of months ago LG sent me an OLED for a review - a 65" OLEDB6 TV. I loved that TV - it looked great, the image quality is terrific and the smart operation system is excellent - here's my full review, posted in November.

When I posted my review, I had to return the TV to LG, and go back to my previous one - a 40" Philips LED TV. After a week or so, I gave up, and bought myself a 55" OLEDB6. Now I'm back with an OLED TV, and this one isn't going back to LG!

Virtual Reality (VR) means a near-eye display that completely blocks the real world and replaces it with a simulated display. VR displays have been around for a long time - the first VR head mounted displays (HMD) were introduced in the 1960s, but these devices, and those devices that followed it for 50 years suffered from many problems due to primitive technology.

Everything seems to have changed in 2012, when Oculus Rift raised $2.5 million on Kickstarter to develop its VR HMD. Less than 2 years later, the company was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion, and the VR market finally emerged. A good VR experience requires a high end display that features fast response time, high resolution, power efficiency, light weight, and more. OLEDs are the perfect choice for VR displays - especially due to the technology's low latency (as opposed to LCD displays, which are notoriously slow).

2016 is soon over - and this has been a great year for the OLED industry. Following Apple's reported adoption of OLED displays in its future iPhones, display makers accelerated their OLED production plans. The market share of OLED displays (including flexible OLEDs ) continue to increase and the market is now experience a supply shortage. OLED TVs are also becoming more and more popular.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on OLED-Info in 2016, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

• Lenovo announces the world's first OLED laptop - with a 14" AMOLED display (Jan 4)
• LG announce their OLED TV lineup for 2016 (Jan 6)
• Lenovo demonstrates two foldable device prototypes (Dec 22)
• HSBC: Samsung to release the first foldable OLED phone by the end of 2016 (Jan 12)
• LG's 2016 OLED TVs prices slashed before Black Friday (Nov 9)
• Audi to use OLED taillights in the 2016 TT RS coupe (Jan 12)
• ETNews: SDC and Apple signed a flexible OLED supply agreement for the 2017 iPhone (Mar 21)
• UDC's evaporable emitters still outperform the best soluble materials (Feb 5)
• Samsung confirms it is developing OLED TV panels (Jan 29)
• Samsung Display to ship the 55" transparent and mirror OLEDs in Q2 2016 (Mar 16)

2016 will soon come to an end, and we are getting ready to summarize this exciting year in the OLED industry. One year ago we posted the top top OLED stories in 2015, and you can see the list below again.

1. Danish site publishes LG's 2015 OLED TV price list
2. LG Display demonstrates 0.97 mm thick 55" flat OLED TV panels
3. Philips aims to spin-off its OLED lighting business unit
4. LG announces six new OLED TVs, including the world's first bendable TV
5. Everdisplay demonstrates a 6" 4K (734 PPI) AMOLED display
6. Samsung reportedly plans its comeback to the OLED TV market with WRGB panels
7. LG's 55" curved 4K OLED TV, the EG9600 is now shipping for $5,499
8. Researchers claim new method can increase OLED efficiency by 3,000%
9. LG Chem's 320x320 mm OLED lighting panel now in production, company develops new integration solutions
10. LGD plans to ship 600,000 OLED TV panels in 2015 and 1.5 million in 2016

It was not a surprise to find most of the stories discuss OLED TVs - as 2015 marked the year when LG began to push OLED TVs into the market with more vigor.

StoreDot was established in 2011, to commercialize bio-organic quantum dots based on a process developed at Tel Aviv University. The company's first product was to be a memory device - hence the name StoreDot. In 2013 I visited the company in its Ramat Gan office to report on its quantum dot advances for display applications.

Since 2013, a lot has happened at StoreDot. The company changed its direction and is now focused on a new organic-material synthesis method that enabled it to develop nanomaterials that exhibit quantum dot like performance but that are not actually quantum dots. The company is now targeting two applications - fast charging batteries and displays. StoreDot has moved to large offices in Herzelia, has now over 60 employees and raised over $60 million dollars (led by Samsung Ventures). The one thing that did not change is the name - even though the company is neither into memory devices nor quantum dots anymore...

When the nice guys from LG's Israeli public relations office reach out and offer to send an OLED TV for a review - you say yes. Naturally, I graciously accepted and received a new 65" OLEDB6 TV. Here's my hands-on review of LG's new TV.

The OLEDB6 was launched in early 2016, and is actually LG's entry-level OLED TV for 2016, alongside the curved OLEDC6. The B6 features a flat 4K WRGB (WOLED-CF) OLED panel, LG's latest WebOS 3.0 operation system, HDR support and LG's Color Prime Pro technology. The TV does not support 3D, but strangely LG did bundle a couple of passive 3D glasses with the TV. The B6 comes in two sizes - 55" and 65".

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay, VR/AR, graphene and flexible OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to November 2016.

The OLED for VR/AR Market Report:

• Why OLEDs are adopted in almost all VR HMDs
• What kind of displays are required for VR and AR applications
• What the future holds for the VR and AR markets
• Current and future VR and AR systems

The report package provides a great introduction to the emerging VR and AR market, and details the role that OLED displays will have. Read more here!

We are glad to announce that we reached 2,000 followers to our twitter account! We promise to continue sharing OLED news from around the world.

Our Twitter account is a great way to follow the OLED industry and stay updated on our OLED news and commentary. You can also follow us through Facebook, LinkedIn, our free monthly newsletter (that has over 16,000 subscribers) and our RSS feed.

TADF, or Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence, represents a class of OLED emitter materials that aim to provide efficient and long-lifetime performance. TADF research started in earnest in 2012, and some believe that TADF represent an exciting new platform for next-gen OLED emitters.

As OLED display adoption grows, researchers and developers at Universities and companies are looking to develop more efficient and cost-effective OLED materials. There are currently three main drivers for these efforts - the development of an efficient and long-lasting blue color emitter, the development of alternative non-phosphorescent emitters and the development of soluble materials that can be deposited in ink-jet printing and other "wet" methods.