Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 10

Yole Developpement sees the AR market finally emerging in 2022 or 2023 - as there are still several challenges to solve before AR systems that are good enough for mass adoption.

Yole sees OLED microdisplays (OLED on Silicon) as the best current technology, but by 2022 it is likely that MicroLED displays will prove better than OLEDs - and so OLED shipments to the AR market will always be quite limited in volume.

IHS says that LG Display is the world's leading AMOLED supplier for smartwatches and wearables. In 2017 LGD shipped 10.64 million AMOLED displays for smartwatches - and it holds a market share of 41.4% (the total market was 25.7 million units in 2017). LG is the exclusive supplier of AMOLED displays for Apple's watch.

Samsung Displays is the 2nd wearable AMOLED Producer, with a 34.8% market share. Everdisplay has a 16.2% share and AU Optronics shipped 5.7% of all wearable AMOLED shipments in 2017. BOE is the fifth largest AMOLED wearable maker with a market share of 1.5%.

Taiwan-based AU Optronics (AUO) demonstrated the company's latest OLED, LCD and Micro-LED technologies at SID 2018.

The company had a relatively small OLED demonstration area, showing its True-Circle in-cell Touch AMOLED displays (1.2" and 1.4") unveiled in May 2017. These displays are already shipping. AUO also unveiled its large 13" transparent AR AMOLED (68% transmittance). This transparent OLED was shown for the first time. The 13" panel features a resolution of 1150x575 (100 PPI) and a brightness of 200 nits.

China-based OLED producer Visionox had a very impressive booth at SID 2018, demonstrating the company's latest AMOLED and PMOLED displays and prototypes.

Visionox is now producing AMOLED displays for smartphones and wearables and the company showcased a wide range of AMOLED panels and also commercial phones that use these panels. Visionox also demonstrated many new display prototypes.

In October 2017 Taiwan-based Innolux started to produce its first flexible AMOLED display, a round 1.39" 400x400 (287 PPI) panel. This is a great display for wearable applications, mostly smart watches.

The short video above shows this interesting display in action, in our demo kit (which is also available to order).

Everdisplay is producing a range of AMOLED displays, for smartphones and wearables, and we have added three new EDO displays to our OLED Marketplace.

The three new displays are a 0.95" 180x120 AMOLED, a round 1.19" 390x390 AMOLED and a rectangular 1.41" 320x360 AMOLED. Let us know if you are interested in acquiring these displays!

The Fraunhofer FEP, together with VTT and the Holst Center developed a new wearable OLED lighting bracelet, one of the first one of the first flexible organic electronic product to be produced at the European PI-SCALE pilot production line.

The yellow and red OLED deposition in this prototype was performed at the Fraunhofer FPP (which can handle both sheet-to-sheet and roll-to-roll processes), while the barrier web was produced at the Holst Centre. VTT integrated the OLEDs into the bracelet. Such a bracelet, with its low power consumption, could be used as a security device, as a fashion jewelry, and more.

During a wearable conference in Tokyo, Japan's ColorLink demonstrated its new VR and AR prototype devices, which both use OLED microdisplays. The company says that using OLED microdisplays it can produce more compact VR devices.

The ColorLink devices use 0.7" FHD OLED microdisplays, which are probably Sony's ECX335AF displays.

Last week we posted about Skyworth's CES booth, where the company reportedly demonstrated new household appliances that utilize flexible AMOLED displays. It turns out that Skyworth also unveiled a smart bracelet that utilizes a flexible OLED

This seems to be a very early prototype device, as the engineering is crude and it appears just to show an image - but still it is nice to see companies testing flexible OLED based designs.

AU Optronics launched a new round AMOLED for smartwatches and other applications. This panel is 1.2" in diameter (33.22 x 34.72 mm in size) with a high resolution (390x390, 460 PPI). Click here for more information on this new panel.

Let us know if you are interested in obtaining AUO's latest AMOLED panel, or browse for other OLEDs at our extensive OLED catalog.