Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 6

DSCC says that OLED area shipments will grow in 2020 to around 10.5 million square meters, up from 8 million square meters in 2019 - a growth of around 31%. In terms of revenues, the OLED market will grow 35% in 2020 to reach $37.6 billion. DSCC says that in 2020, 731 million OLEDs will be produced (up 27% from 2019).

Smartphone revenues will reach $30.7 billion in 2019 (up 35% from 2019) while TV revenues will grow 28% to $3.2 billion. Smartwatch revenues will increase 11% in 2020 to $2 billlion. The revenues for all other OLED applications are expected to increase by 69% in 2020 to $1.6 billion, mainly driven by laptop OLED displays.

DSCC says that OLED panel revenues in Q4 2019 reached $8.1 billion, down 2% from Q3 2019 and pretty much the same as in Q4 2018. In terms of units, DSCC says that in Q4 2019 124 million smartphone panels were shipped, 31 million wearable panels and 998,000 TV panels.

Smartphone revenues in Q4 2019 were down 2% from Q4 2018 (due to lower average sales price for both rigid and flexible panels, the number of panels actually increased 4%), and revenues for TVs were up 30% (to $752 million). Smartwatches remain the 3rd largest market for OLED panels, and experienced strong growth in 2019, but it seems as if the growth may have plateaued (in Q4 the revenues were down 7% from last year).

IHS says that smartwatch display shipments continue to rise, and reached 57 million units in Q3 2019. IHS expects total shipments in 2019 will reach 195 million units - up 31% from 2018 (149 million units).

IHS also revealed the breakdown by display maker. The leading producer by far is BOE Display, followed by LG Display (who produced all of Apple's OLED wearable displays in Q3 2019, but this is now changing) and then Truly.

Panasonic developed HDR 4K VR eyeglasses that utilize Kopin's OLED Microdisplays. The microdisplay-based design enabled Panasonic to offer a smaller and lighter solution compared to current VR headsets that use large (usually around 3" per eye) displays.

Panasonic says that the new eyeglasses provide high-quality images without any screen-door effect. Panasonic is not releasing these as a product yet, but the company says that it will continue to further develop the new VR glasses for new applications.

IHS Markit says that rigid AMOLED is the leading smartwatch display technology, with a market share of 36% (in Q4 2019) - up from a market share of only 14% in the beginning of 2019. Rigid AMOLEDs enjoy the fastest growth of all display technologies.

All OLED displays together (PMOLED, AMOLED and flexible OLEDs) take up a market share of 69%. The market share of PMOLED displays shrunk from 51% in 2018 to 19% in 2019 as rigid AMOLEDs starts to be adopted where PMOLED displays once were. To learn more about the PMOLED market and its future, see our PMOLED Market Report.

Visionox announced that it is supplying the highly-curved 2.07" 326 PPI 430 nits AMOLED display for Huami's next-generation Amazfit X smartwatch, which will be released in Q1 2020.

Huami, which is a subsidiary of Xiaomi, is enjoying great success with its wearable devices. In 2018 it has shipped 27.5 million smartwatches - surpassing even Apple. This could be an excellent design win for Visionox.

Taiwan-based PMOLED display maker RiTDisplay's CEO says that the company's PMOLED sales has been affected by e-cigarette bans in the US, and the company is now shifting its focus to develop micro LED displays (and also mini-LED ones). RiTDisplay's revenues in 2019 to date, $47.1 million USD, decreased 32.4% compared to last year.

In May 2019 RiTDisplay announced a strategic partnership and share swap with Taiwan-based MicroLED developer PlayNitride. As part of the partnership, RiTDisplay gained access to PlayNitride's technology and is able to produce and sell micro-LED panel based on this technology and IP.

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.

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.

DSCC says that OLED panel unit shipments will reach 1.06 billion by 2023. The growth will peak in 2020 (with a 27% unit growth and 25% revenue growth from 2019). Overall revenues for OLED panels will grow from $26.5 billion in 2018 to $46.2 billion in 2023.

DSCC says that it lowered its OLED TV forecast for 2020-2023, as LGD is delaying both its Guangzhou 8.5-Gen fab ramp up and its P10 10.5-Gen line by one year. New LCD technologies, including dual-cell LCD and miniLEDs will also hurt the growth of the OLED TV market. DSCC further reports that LG Electronics will not be able to reach its 2 million OLED TV goal in 2019 - and have asked LGD to supply it with only 2.5 million OLED TV panels in 2020 (the original plan was to supply 3.5 million panels to LGE).