The OLED-Info newsletter (November 9, 2021)

Xiaomi's Redmi Watch 2 smartwatch features a 1.6" 360x320 rectangular AMOLED display, an SpO2 sensor and a heart rate monitor.

The Redmi Watch 2 will cost around $60 and will ship in November 2021.

Lenovo's XiaoXin Pad Pro 12.6 tablet uses a 12.6" 2560x1600 120Hz 400-nits AMOLED display (produced by SDC), a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chipset, 8 GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The XiaoXin Pad Pro 12.6 will ship soon in China for 4,299 yuan (around $670 USD)

Audi announced a new version of its A8 and S8 cars, both of which will come standard now with digital OLED rear lights.

Customers can choose one of two light signatures on the A8 (the S8 offers three possible signatures). Audi says it will deliver the first cars in Q2 2022.

The Vivobook 13 Slate OLED is a detachable Windows laptop/tablet device that features a 13.3" AMOLED display, Intel chipsets, up to 8 GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage.

The ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED will ship by the end of 2021, starting at $600.

Revenues were a record $143.6 million, up from $117.1 million in Q3 2020 and net profit was $46.1 million (up from $40.5 million from Q3 2020). The company has about $789 million in cash and equivalents, the it reiterates its full-year 2021 revenue guidance to be between $530 million and $560 million.

Regarding its blue PHOLED R&D effort, UDC says it is making "excellent progress", and the company believes that a commercial blue material is a question of when and not if.

MSI's high-end gaming monitor, the 551U sports a 55-inch 4K WOLED panel (produced by LGD), and features HDMI 2.1, VRR, zero latency, and Display Stream Compression (DSC).

The MEG 551U OLED monitor will ship in 2022.

In 2020, US-based Kebotix was awarded with a US DoE grant to develop AI-based molecular screening technology to identify novel blue OLED emitters. The company now announced that it has managed to discover several new classes of candidate materials, and develop device prototypes.

Kebotix says it aims to start testing these molecules with device makers in early- to mid-2022.

DSCC says that it expects OLED investments (new production capacity) to increase in the IT space, as demand for laptops, tablets and monitors increases and OLED penetration increases. There is much room for growth in this market - DSCC estimates that the current OLED penetration into the IT display market is just 1.4% in 2021. DSCC expects to see fabs focused on the IT markets accounting for 37% of 2022-2025 OLED equipment spending.

Helped by spending in IT markets, 2024 is expected to be the largest year for OLED equipment spending since 2017. Interestingly, DSCC says that OLED spending in China is has slowed due to a lack of penetration, but OLED spending in Korea continues to increase. Korea’s OLED spending is expected to grow by 637% in 2022 and another 50% in 2023 to $4.4B.

DSCC posted an interesting article, comparing the production costs of OLED vs mini-LED panels for IT. DSCC estimates that for tablets and notebooks, a tandem structure will be used, and the panels will be based on rigid substrates.

In the chart above you see a production cost comparison, between 2021 and 2025, for 12.9" panels. DSCC looks at two OLED production options: a tandem OLED panel with an LTPO backplane produced in a 6-Gen fab, and a similar panel that uses an Oxide-TFT backplane and produced in a larger 8.5-Gen fab. As you can see, OLED panels are more cost effective, and will remain so throughout the forecast period.

According to reports, BOE started mass producing OLED displays at its 6-Gen B12 production line in Chongqing, China. The ramp up is in stages, with the plant expected to reach full production capacity in late 2022 or early 2023.

The reports suggest that the first panels in production now will ship to Oppo for its smartphones. Actual shipments will begin by the end of 2021 (it is likely that actual production volume right now is still low).