OLED production - Page 26

China-based OLED producer Visionox announced plans to establish its 2nd flexible OLED production line in Hefei. The new line will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 1500x1850 mm substrates (6-Gen), similar to the company's first line in Hebei.

The construction of the new line will take 25 months - so mass production will not begin before the end of 2020. Total investment in the new production line will be $6.3 billion, out of which $3.15 billion will be raised with debt and the rest by equity - by Visionox and the Hefei Municipal People's Government.

According to Korea's ETNews, SDC's rigid OLED production level has recovered fully in Q3 2018 and is now even higher than the production level in Q3 2017. Most of the new demand comes from China-based smartphone producers. ETNews says that SDC's A2 factory's utilization rates were over 90% in Q3 2018 (up from about 80% in Q3 2017).

Samsung's flexible OLED production has also recovered following new shipments to Apple's iPhone XS and XS Max, but the utilization rate in SDC's A3 flexible OLED fab is still lower than last year's.

In 2013, Samsung announced its YOUM flexible OLED brand, showing off several flexible OLED prototypes - including a foldable phone/tablet. Samsung never used the YOUM brand name again, but the foldable smartphone concept presented in 2013 (see image below) is still exciting consumers - and many of them are still waiting for Samsung to commercialize the technology.

Fast forward to 2015, and the first reports of Samsung's Project Valley started to surface. Samsung started to actually develop a foldable phone, with plans to release its first device in 2016. Samsung faced many challenges - and delays - in its foldable smartphone project (which was recently renamed to Project Winner) - including problems with the substrate and the software and user interface.

In 2015, the EU launched the €4.4 million Flexolighting project (led by Brunel University London) with an aim to develop new materials, processes and methods to overcome current OLED lighting challenges - including lifetime, lighting uniformity and more.

The project's consortium announced that following the project completion and a rethinking of the complete OLED supply chain, it believes that high efficiency OLED lighting panels can be produced at a cost that is on a similar level with LED lighting.

China-based AMOLED producer Everdisplay has started to mass produce VR AMOLED displays. The company's first such panel is a 2.95" 1080x1200 (547 PPI) panel that features a refresh rate of 90Hz, a maximum brightness of 100 nits and a MIPI Interface.

This new panel is now available through the OLED Marketplace. Let us know if you are interested in acquiring this display and use it in your future device.

Due to lower demand for flexible (due to several reasons, see here) in late 2017 and early 2018, Samsung's utilization rates at its flexible OLEDs fab were quite low, and its A4 production line was pretty much unused for the time.

But demand for mobile OLED displays is now on the rise, and a report from Korea now suggests that SDC aims to resume flexible OLED production in its A4 line in October 2018 - as the company secured new ordered for smartphone OLEDs from Chinese phone makers.

In March 2017 OLED maker BOE Technology and OLED Microdisplay maker OLiGHTEK announced a new $170 million joint-venture to produce OLED microdisplays for the consumer VR and AR markets.

Today we have a report from Korean ET News site that BOE is getting ready to start trial production in the new fab in early 2019. Kunming BOE Display Technology, the JV that was established by BOE and OLiGHTEK has began to order equipment for its new fab (including CVD, ALD, AOI and sputters)

The Nikkei Asian Review says that Samsung's OLED shipments to Apple for its iPhone X dropped to only 6 million panels in Q2 2018 (April-June). In Q1 2018, it was estimated that SDC produced almost 20 million panels for Apple. NAR says that SDC expected to ship around 12-15 million panels to Apple's iPhone X in the quarter, so this is a major disappointment for Samsung.

According to this report, the sale's of Apple's iPhone X has been much lower than expected in the past quarter. Apple, however, will reportedly release two new OLED smartphones in 2018 - and in June 2018 DSSC said that SDC's flexible OLED fabs utilization rates have been recovering, as SDC started to produce panels for Apple's 2018 phones, and Samsung's own flagship phones.

In January 2018 Sharp's CEO announced that Sharp aims to begin commercial production of flexible OLED displays for its own smartphones in Q1 2018. A later report from Taiwan suggested that Sharp is converting a third of its 4.5-Gen Taki plant capacity from LCD to OLED. 30,000 out of 90,000 monthly LCD substrates will be converted to 22,000 OLED substrates.

A new report from Japan, citing Sharp's EVP Katsuaki Nomura, claims that OLED mass production at Sharp began in June 2018, and the company will ship its first OLED Aquos smartphone in Q4 2018.

Tianma started producing rigid and flexible OLEDS in April 2017 at the company's 6-Gen fab in Wuhan, and on June 27th the company announced that it plans to construct the 2nd phase of the Wuhan AMOLED fab.

Tianma's Wuhan expansion project will cost around 14.5 billion Yuan ($2.12 billion USD) and will take about 25 months - so production at the 2nd phase is scheduled for September 2020. When the 2nd phase is complete' Tianma's flexible AMOLED capacity will be 37,500 monthly 6-Gen substrates.