The OLED-Info newsletter (July 16, 2022)

In 2020 Kateeva lost Samsung's QD-OLED inkjet printing inkjet printing contact to Korea's Semes, which resulted in massive layoffs including some of Kateeva's executives.

In January 2022 it was reported that Samsung has decided to change course , and rely on Kateeva's inkjet printers in its 2nd QD-OLED production line, as the Semes printers do not perform as well as Samsung hoped.

DSCC updated its OLED material market data, and it now sees AMOLED stack material revenues growing at a 18% from 2020 ($1.07 billion) to 2026 ($2.9 billion). If UDC actually manages to release a commercial blue PHOLED, the market could even exceed $3 billion.

The majority of OLED material revenues from from TV applications, but the market share of mobile devices is expected to grow and reach almost 50% by 2026.

In 2021, China-based SAIC launched the Zhiji L7, an electric sports sedan that offered 615-1,000 Km range (depending on the model), wireless charging, side-view mirrors semi-autonomous driving.

The Zhiji L7 has a center AMOLED display produced by China's Everdisplay. This is a 12.8" 1728x1888 automotive-grade AMOLED, that offers a lifetime of over 10,000 hours (LT80).

The Xiaomi Band 7 Pro is a smartwatch that offers a 1.64" 280x456 (326 PPI) rectangular AMOLED display, heart rate and blood-oxygen tracking, 6-days of battery under heavy use and 5ATM waterproofing.

The Band 7 Pro is now shipping in China, starting at around $60.

Huawei's Nova 10 smartphone offers a 6.67-inch 120Hz 1080x2400 AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 778G chipset, 8 GB of RAM, 128/256 GB of storage and a triple camera setup. The Nova 10 Pro offers a slightly larger and sharper display, 6.78-inch 120Hz 1200x2652, and other increased specifications.

The Nova 10 and Nova 10 Pro should start shipping soon starting at $400.

Following strong demand for IT devices, and Samsung's success in the OLED laptop market, OLED makers have began to plan building new OLED production lines specifically for IT applications: laptops, tablets and monitors.

Several OLED makers, including Samsung, LG and BOE , are considering building 8.5-Gen production lines for this market. In fact DSCC estimated that there are 11 such lines under development right now. But it turns out that this is not so simple as designing the evaporation equipment for larger substrates is a challenge.

According to reports, Apple finalized its supply plans for the iPhone 14 series, and the US phone maker decided to add BOE to its new iPhone supplier list.

This is the first time that BOE manages to become a new iPhone supplier (the company already produces AMOLED displays for refurbished iPhones). According to the latest report, Apple ordered a total of 90 million OLED displays: 60 million from Samsung, 25 million from LGD and 5 million from BOE (which will so supply 5.5% of the total orders).

Xiaomi's 12 Lite smartphone is a smaller (a budget-friendly addition to Xiaomi's 12 series) features a 6.55" 120Hz 1080x2400 AMOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G chipset, 128/256 GB of RAM, 6/8 GB of storage and a triple camera setup.

The Xiaomi 12 Lite phone will ship by the end of July 2022 starting at around $450.

Korea-based OLED equipment maker AP Systems (APS) announced that it developed a new system to deposit optically transparent resin (OCR) using an inkjet printing process.

Current OLED production uses an adhesive tape (OCA) to connect the cover glass to the display. But OCA is time-consuming and relatively expensive. OCR, on the other hand, is deposited directly on the panel and is more cost effective. We recently reported that Samsung Display aims to adopt OCR technology in its foldable OLEDs to reduce costs, and is testing inkjet systems made by STI.

Market research firm Omdia sees higher demand for OLED solutions for the automotive sector. Omdia says shipments of OLED panels will grow from around 500,000 units in 2022 to almost 6 million units by 2028.

Currently most automotive makers that use OLEDs adopt flexible panels, but Omdia actually sees the adoption of rigid glass-based OLEDs (single stack) growing faster than that of flexible OLEDs (tandem stack), and by 2027 the share of rigid automotive OLEDs will be higher than that of flexible ones. This is an interesting forecast.

The Infinix Note 12 5G smartphone offers a 6.7-inch 1080x2400 AMOLED display, a MediaTek Dimensity 810 chipset, 6 G of RAM, 64 GB of storage, microSDXC, Dual SIM and a triple camera setup.

The Note 12 Pro offers the same display, but with better specifications.

The Infinix Note 12 smartphones will ship by the end of July 2022, starting at around $190.

Panasonic Avionics launched off a new aircraft internal entertainment platform, called Astrova, that is based on OLED displays.

The platform includes three screen options: 13-inch, 16-inch and 22-inch 4K screens. All of these are OLED displays.

According to reports from Korea, Samsung Display is considering to start producing OLED microdisplays, to support its customer needs. Apparently Samsung Electronics, Apple, Meta and others have been reaching out to Samsung regarding OLED microdisplay production.

Samsung 2011 OLED microdisplay prototype

The microdisplay market is seeing strong demand, or at least strong interest, as all major tech companies are developing solutions for AR and VR. Samsung Display has refrained from developing OLED microdisplay technologies, as it believed profitability will not be good in this market, but this could change now.

Omdia says that the market share of Korea's OLED producers, SDC and LGD is eroding, as Chinese OLED makers increase their OLED shipments. A main driver is Apple's increased iPhone AMOLED orders from BOE.

Omdia says that BOE's market share has increased from 5.6% in 2019 to almost 12% in 2022 (first quarter). The market share of all AMOLED makers in China is now above 20%, from from less than 10% in 2019.

DSCC estimates that the OLED market will increase 2% in 2022, to reach $42 billion. Revenues for smartphones, the leading OLED application, will actually decline by 4%, but this will be offset by increases in other applications.

In fact, some applications will experience very fast growth: OLED monitors (641% unit growth, 279% revenue growth), OLED laptops (64% units, 39% revenue) and automotive displays (73% units, 68% revenue).