OLED production - Page 20

BOE held its annual Innovation Partner Conference in Beijing, and the company's chairman said that the company aims to produce at least 70 million flexible AMOLED panels. This is a sharp increase from what BOE estimated only last month.

BOE has been known to make aggressive targets - it first aimed to produce 30-50 million AMOLED panels in 2019, but eventually the number of panels in 2019 will be around 20 million.

In 2017 Samsung Display started to build its largest OLED production fab, the A5 fab in Asan. The fab was supposed to have a monthly capacity of 180,000 to 270,000 monthly substrates (Samsung's A3 line has a monthly capacity of 135,000 substrates).

Following lower demand for OLED panels and increased competition from China, Samsung stopped constructing the A5 fab, but a new report from Korea now suggests that Samsung is now starting to construct the A5 fab as demand for OLED displays is picking up.

The local government at Shucheng, Anhui Province, China, has launched a new five year initiative where one of the goals is to establish a display industry cluster with a focus on OLED technologies.

According to a report from China, the first major display project within the initiative involves the establishment of an AMOLED touchscreen production base - as Shucheng aims to become the world's largest producer of OLED touchscreens.

JOLED announced that it has started sampling inkjet-printed OLED display panels in its 5.5-Gen (1300x1500 mm) production line in Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. Mass production is planned for 2020.

JOLED will market these medium-sized (10-32 inch) panels for use in applications such as high-end monitors, medical monitors and the automotive market. The Nomi site will have a monthly production of 20,000 substrates.

Apple developed its LTPO backplane technology for OLED displays to enable power saving of around 5-15% compared to LTPS AMOLEDs. LTPO was adopted in Apple's Watch Series 4 and Watch Series 5 smart watches - with the panels produced by LG Display using Apple's technology and IP.

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung has recently developed its own brand of LTPO backplane technology and has started to produce such panels - which are adopted by the company's latest smart watch, the Galaxy Watch Active 2. The watch has a 1.2" 360x360 or 1.4" 360x360 round AMOLED displays.

On August 30 LG Display announced today that it started producing OLED TV panels at its 8.5-Gen OLED fab in Guangzhou, China. LGD hoped that mass production will begin shortly, but according to a new report from Korea the new fab's yields are low (50-60%) and actual mass production has not started yet.

LGD's new fab has a monthly capacity of 60,000 substrates, which will be expanded to 90,000 by 2021. The company has now lowered its OLED TV forecasts for 2019 as it did not meet its goal of starting shipping commercial panels in October.

Samsung recently re-launched its foldable OLED smartphone, the Galaxy Fold - and the $2,000 smartphone seems to be selling well. In September it was reported that Samsung is seeing strong demand in Korea, and now there is a report from Korea that Samsung Display is ramping up its foldable OLED production.

According to the Korea Herald, SDC has produced 40,000 foldable in August, and had planned to increase that to 67,000 units in September. But it actually produced 92,000 foldable panels in September, and it plans to increase production rate to 102,000 units in October and 99,000 units in November. Samsung's foldable OLED capacity is 3,300 units per day - so it is pretty much running at full capacity now.

In April 2019 Reuters reported that Japan Display (JDI) signed a deal with Apple to supply it with AMOLED displays for its smartwatches, and today JDI's new CEO Minoru Kikuoka said that the company recently started producing OLED displays - likely indeed this is low volume production for Apple's wearables.

Apple's Watch Series 5 (its latest generation) features a 324x394 1000-nits always-on LTPO AMOLED display (368x448 on the 44m model). Apple is currently buying these OLED displays exclusively from LGD.

IHS Markit estimates that OLED TV displays revenues will grow from $2.9 billion in 2019 to $7.5 billion in 2025. Note that IHS is looking at OLED TV display revenues and not total TV set revenues. In 2019 the market share of OLED TV displays out of the total TV display market will be 8.6% - and this will grow to 20.6% (IHS estimates the total TV display market at $36 billion in 2025).

IHS sees OLED TV panel prices starting to decrease in 2020 as OLED TV panel makers (LGD is currently the only one) start to adopt new technologies to decreases costs such as multi-model glass (MMG), ink-jet printing and QD-OLEDs.

Business Korea says that Samsung Display has finalized its QD-OLED TV production plans. The company will invest 13 trillion Won (around $10.85 billion) to convert its L8 LCD production line in Tangjeong to QD-OLED production.

According to the report, SDC's investment will be the single largest investment in Korea's display industry ever. The L8-1-1 LCD line will be shut down immediately, and converted to QD-OLED production. SDC will also shut down its second line (L8-2-1) and in total the two fabs will be able to produce 200,000 8-Gen glass substrates each month (down from the current 360,000 substrates in LCD production today). Mass production of QD-OLED panels will begin in 2022.