Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 15

A few weeks ago Everdisplay demonstrated several AMOLED prototypes, including some new displays such as a 0.95" square AMOLED and a 1.2" circular one.

In a recent tradeshow, Everdisplay demonstrated these new displays, but now the company unveiled the specifications of its new panels. The 0.95" square AMOLED features a resolution of 180x120 (228 PPI), a thickness of 0.5 mm and a luminance of 350 nits. The 1.2" circular panel is 390x390 (326 PPI), 0.4 mm thick and with the same luminance of 350 nits.

The first-generation Apple Watch uses a flexible OLED display, exclusively produced by LG Display. Digitimes now says that Apple is developing a Micro-LED panel to be used in a future Watch - to be released in H2 2017.

Apple acquired Micro-LED developer LuxVuew in May 2014, and according to this report has setup a micro-LED research lab in Taiwan in 2015.

IHS estimates that 90.8 million OLED panels shipped in Q1 2016, and most of these (87.35 million) used in smartphones. 2 million panels were used in smartwatches. IHS also estimates that 145,000 OLED TVs shipped in Q1 2016 (a decrease from the 200,000 panels shipped in Q4 2015).

OLED adoption in smartphones increased by 62.8% compared to Q1 2015. The increase in OLED shipments to smartphones were mostly due to new (most Chinese) smartphone makers using OLED displays. SDC is still the clear OLED leader, with a market share of 97.7%. LGD follows with 0.9% and AUO with 0.7%.

Samsung Display developed a new high-resolution OLED display, specifically for VR applications. The 5.5" panel, on display at SID DisplayWeek, sported a 3840x2160 resolution - or 806 PPI. The panel offered a brightness of 350 nits and a color gamut of 97% adobe RGB.

This is the highest resolution mobile phone sized OLED ever demonstrated, and it exactly matches the highest resolution LCD - Sharp's 5.5" 806 PPI IGZO panel unveiled in 2015. Samsung's display probably uses some sort of PenTile architecture, though, so actual sub-pixel count is smaller.

BOE Display had a large booth at SID, and the Chinese company demonstrated several new AMOLED prototypes - including large 10" panels and bendable OLEDs.

So first up we have 4.35" bendable and foldable OLED displays. The bendable panels offer a resolution of 1120x480 (HWVGA, 280 PPI) and a bending radius of 15 mm. The brightness is 350 nits. The color gamut is 100% NTSC. The foldable panels are the same - except the bending radius is much smaller at 5 mm.

Analyst firm IDTechEx has just released their new market forecasts for OLED displays. IDTechEx expects the market will reach nearly $1.6 billion this year and will grow to $57 billion in 2026.

For the last two years, the company has correctly predicted that plastic OLED and flexible OLED would be the major trend in displays. In the latest report, IDTechEx has revised their market forecast upwards based on the planned increase in production capacity.

During CES Asia 2016, Everdisplay demonstrated several AMOLED prototypes, including some new ones. For the wearable market, EDO is showing several displays:

• 1.2" circular
• 0.95" square
• 1.41" square
• 1.4" circular (already in production)

EDO announced that the 1.2" panel will enter production in July 2016 - and the company says that Huawei will launch a smartwatch with this display in September. EDO also reveals that Hauwei's 1.4" round Watch (shipping now for $349 - $799) uses an AMOLED made by EDO, as well.

The following premium article takes a look at the current markets for OLED displays - including smartphones, wearables, VR / AR, mobile PCs and TVs. We will then summarize OLED market forecasts by leading analysts.

In recent weeks, we heard very strong indicators from OLED equipment and component makers. Coherent, Orbotech, Colnatec and MagnaChip all reported significant OLED orders, and are very optimistic about the OLED market going forward.

Those suppliers report sales mostly to Korea, of course, but also to Japanese and Chinese display makers, as these new players ramp up their OLED production and begin to compete with Samsung and LGD.

The VR market is set for very fast growth in the next few years, and OLED displays are the best displays for this market - mostly because of the fast response time which is required for such applications. OLEDs also offer, of course, a better image quality, better colors, lighter weigh and better efficiency.

As companies such as Apple, Samsung, Google, Facebook and Sony enter this market, display makers are starting to develop products specifically for VR headsets. According to a report from Business Korea, the major problem with VR today is the screen density - a good VR experience requires a screen resolution that is at least three times higher than that of a mobile phone display (which is currently at around 500 PPI).

Epson launched its latest augmented reality headset, the Moverio BT-300, at the Mobile World Congress last week. The main update in that version is the OLED microdisplay - which replaces the old LCD one.

The OLED is a 0.43" microdisplay-on-silicon that features a resolution of 720p, a brightness of 1,200 nits and a contrast of 100,000:1. Other features include an integrated 5mp camera and an Android 5.1 wired control-box that is based on a quad-core (1.44Ghz) Atom X5 chipset.