In 2022, we reported that Visionox announced plans to build a new $1.6 billion flexible 6-Gen OLED module production line in Hefei. 

According to a new report from China,the company's construction partner, China Construction First Engineering Bureau, has finished the fab construction, that has passed the completion acceptance. It's not clear what is Visionox's timeline and plans to ramp up the fab and begin actual module assembly, but this is an important milesetone for Visionox's project.

According to reports from Korea, three former senior researchers at LG Display are accused of passing OLED trade secrets to a Chinese panel maker. The Seoul District Prosecutor office says that the there researchers took photos of designs at LGD's Guangzhou factor in 2021 and 2022, related to large-area WOLED panel production processes.

One of the suspects started working for a large China-based display company in 2021, and he allegedly colluded with a former LG Display employee to steal large-scale OLED panel mass production technology.

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent announced their financial results for Q2 2024, with revenues of $1.3 billion, a 9.1% increase over 2023. The rise in revenues is mostly thanks for strong demand for the company's AI-related datacom transceiver business. 

As part of the quarter results announcements, Coherent also announced that it received its first volume order for its new linebeam annealing systems for 8-Gen AMOLED fabs, used to produce IT displays for tablets, laptops and monitors.

According to DSCC, OLED panel shipments increased 50% in the second quarter of 2024, compared to the second quarter of 2023. Compared to the previous quarter, shipments increased 13%. 

DSCC says that OLED tablet shipments increased 356% in the quarter compared to last year (led by Apple's adoption of AMOLEDs in its iPad Pro devices). OLED smartphone spanel shipments also 49%, while OLED TV panel shipments increased 30% from 2023.

This is a guest post by Anastasiia Pusenkova, Quantum Application Lead at Nord Quantique

Quantum computing has seen explosive growth in recent years, offering phenomenal potential across multiple industries such as pharmaceuticals, logistics, energy and cryptography, to name a few. One of quantum’s most promising applications is simulation of materials, where advanced algorithms combined with error-corrected hardware could soon transform the entire industry.

Classically Intractable tasks

Classical computational methods ⁱ have driven scientific progress for decades, particularly in computational chemistry. However, computational demands increase significantly for larger molecules, making classical methods insufficient as they struggle with the exponential growth in the complexity of these calculations, and the resources required. This makes accurate simulations close to impossible for large chemical systems such as complex proteins, large biomolecules and advanced materials.

Samsung Display demonstrated a new OLED microdisplay at K-Display 2024, a 1.3" 12,000 nits 4000 PPI display. It is not clear whether this display is a direct-emission display, or one that uses white OLEDs with color filters.

Samsung Display's CEO, Choi Joo-seon, said during the conference that SDC will soon commercialize OLED microdisplays based on eMagin's direct-patterning deposition technology (SDC acquired eMagin in 2023). Choi says that the price of OLED microdisplays is an important differentiating factor. Last week Omdia estimated that the price of OLED microdisplays is set to decline sharply in the near future.

China-based Voyah announced that it will launch an international all-electric SUV called the Zhiyin next month. The Zhiyin was specifically developed for the global market, with two distinct front-end designs and several innovative technologies.

The Zhiyin will sport customizable OLED taillights, consisting of 33 individually controlled OLED units on both the upper and lower sections, creating unique light patterns. It is not clear whether this is optional, or whether it will come standard in all of the Zhiyin models. We assume that Yeolight is the OLED panel supplier, but we're not 100% sure.

Motorola's Moto Watch 120 is a budget smartwatch, that sports a 1.43" round AMOLED, Google Fit integration, SpO2 sensor, IP68 certification and up to 10 days of battery life.

The Moto Watch 120 will ship soon, for $129.99. 

DSCC says that shipments of foldable OLED panels reached a record high in the second quarter of 2024 at 9.8 million units - 126% higher than Q2 2023 (and 151% higher than the previous quarter). DSCC believes this will be the peak quarter in 2024, as the demand was fueled by the launch of Samsung's latest foldables, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6.

Samsung holds an almost 50% market share in foldable smartphone panels orders, followed by Huawei at 29%. Timing is relevant, as high demand follows new model shipping dates. DSCC estimates that clamshell devices have a 63% market share out of the total foldable smartphone market, with the rest taken up by in-folding devices.

Samsung Display's Lee Chang-hee, VP and head of SDC's research center, gave a talk during K-Display 2024, and updated that Samsung is progressing towards a next-generation blue OLED emitter technology in two tracks.

SDC is working with Universal Display, to adopt the company's blue PHOLED system. This is progressing, but SDC says that the pace is slow - indeed we heard from UDC lately that the introduction of a commercial material will take longer than expected.

Huawei's Nova Flip is a clamshell smartphone that offers a 6.94" 120Hz 1136x2690 LTPO foldable OLED display, and an external square 2.14" 480x480 LTPO AMOLED. The Nova Flip offers up to 1TB of storage, a dual camera setup and Huawei's own Harmony OS 4.2.

The Nova Flip is expected to ship on August 2024 starting at around $750.

LG Display has decided to sell its last LCD production line, as the company plans to completely focus on OLED display technology. TCL CSoT will buy the fab, in Guangzhou, China, for about $1.5 billion.

The two companies hope to complete the transaction by the end of 2024. The fab, originally built in 2014, produces LCD TV panels. 

Universal Display Corporation reported its financial results for Q2 2024, with revenues of $159 million (up 8% from Q2 2023 and a net income of $52 million (up from $50 million in Q2 2023). The company ended the quarter with $879 million in cash and equivalents.

UDC says it believes the OLED market's trajectory is robust, and it is raising the lower end of its annual guidance, now saying that its revenues will be in the range of $645 million to $675 million.

Realme's 13 Pro smartphone offers a 6.7" 120Hz 2000 nits (peak) 1080x2412 AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 72 Gen 2 chipset, up to 12 GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. The Realme 13 Pro+ offers the same display, but with an improved camera setup.

The Realme 13 Pro and 13 Pro+ will soon ship in India starting at around $330.

The Realme Watch S2 is a smartwatch that has a round 1.43" 466x466 AMOLED display, SpO2 and hear rate sensors, and an AI-backed ChatGPT-powered voice-enabled personal assistant.

The Realme Watch S2 will ship soon in India for around $70.

Samsung Display posted its financial results for Q2 2024, with $5.5 billion in sales and $730 million in operating profit. The company says that its mobile AMOLED unit have seen sales growth, driven by solid demand for flagship products, along with effectively supporting new smartphone launches from key customers (i.e. mostly Apple).

SDC also saw increased sales of both IT OLEDs (mostly tablets and laptops), and gaming monitor panels. The company reported stable sales of QD-OLED TV panels. 

Earlier this year we reported that Apple has decided to sign up BOE as its AMOLED supplier for the upcoming budget iPhone SE4 (with a 6.1" AMOLED display). According to reports back then, Apple's low price target ($25) was not profitable for Samsung that decided to not supply any AMOLEDs for this iPhone model.

According to new reports from Korea, Apple now signed up LG Display to supply some of its iPhone SE4 panels - mostly backup (BOE had its issues with Apple before) and support, as BOE will remain the main panels supplier.

OLED emitter materials are the heart of the OLED device, and the materials that make the most impact on the performance of the OLED display. Most OLED displays utilize red, green and blue emitters.

The efficiency of the current state-of-the-art commercial red and green OLED emitters is excellent - it is in fact close to 100% internal quantum efficiency (IQE) which means that you cannot improve much on the efficiency of the emitter itself (there's still work to be done on getting the light out of the device). Blue OLED emission is a completely different story - current commercial blue emitters suffer from very low efficiency, around 25%. This means that three quarters of the energy goes to waste. Changing to a 100% IQE blue emitter could end up improving the total display efficiency by 20-30%.

The Asus Zenbook 16 Air offers a 16" 120Hz 550 nits 2880x1800 AMOLED display, an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX370 chipset, Radeon 890M GPU and a 50 TOPS NPU. The Zenbook 16 Air is made from ceramic aluminum and weighs 1.49 Kg.

The ASUS Zenbook 16 Air is now available for purchase in China for around $1,800.

A few days ago, Everdisplay Optronics started to move-in equipment in its AMOLED module factory in Yangzhou High-tech Industrial Development Zone, in Jiangsu province.

Everdisplay estimates that the total investment in its new module factory will reach $825 million USD, and it will have an annual capacity of 70 million display modules - when its two lines are in operation. The construction of the factory started in December 2023.

HMD's Crest smartphone offers a 6.67" 1080x2400 AMOLED display, a Unisoc T760 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a microSDXC card slot and a dual camaera setup. The Crest max offers the same display, but with expanded memory and a triple camera setup.

The HMD Crest and Crest Max will ship in August 2024, starting at around $190.

Researchers from Korea's Yonsei University developed a new highly-promising stretchable OLED device by sequential coating technique. The new device can stretch up to 70% and maintain 80% brightness after 300 cycles at 40% strain. The OLED offers a maximum brightness of 3,151 nits and a total current efficiency of 5.4 cd/A.

The researchers say that standard stretchable OLEDs (what they refer to as intrinsically-stretchable OLEDs, or is-OLED) suffer from reduced performance due to orthogonal solvent problem and also the standard lamination process may cause defects and delamination. The new technique overcomes these issues.

Omdia estimates that in 2024, OLED technology has finally overtaken LCD and now holds a market share of 53% in the smartphone display market. OLED penetration is expected to increase to 56% in Q3 2024.

Omdia further says that smartphone shipments have increased 5% in 2023 to reach 1.45 billion units, and the market will continue rising in 2024. 

LG Display says that it has started to mass produce tandem OLED laptop panels, the first company to do so. LGD says its tandem architecture double the lifetime of its OLEDs, reduce power consumption by up to 40%, and enable up to three times the brightness.

LGD has been producing tandem OLED displays since 2019, mainly for the automotive industry. This expertise has enabled it to be Apple's main tandem OLED display suppler for its 2024 iPad Pro devices, and now to be the first one to produce tandem laptop panels. 

According to a report from Korea, following several years if R&D, Poongwon Precision has finally achieved high enough FMM quality and production yields to receive an approval from Samsung Display. 

The company is now gearing up to start mass producing 6-Gen FMM sheets in Q3 2024, and expects to receive the first orders from Samsung Display in September. The company is also in talks with BOE and CSoT for the supply of FMM (although it seems that it will focus on SDC until at least 2027). 

The Realme GT 6 flagship smartphone offers a 6000 nits (peak) 6.78" 120Hz 1264x2780 LTPO AMOLED display, produced by BOE (this is the world's brightest smartphone AMOLED display). The phone also offers a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 512GB of storage and a triple camera setup with two 50 MP sensors.

The Realme GT 6 will sell globally, by the end of June 2024, starting at around $780.

The Oppo Reno12 smartphone offers a 6.7" 120Hz HDR10+ 1080x2412 AMOLED display, a Mediatek Dimensity 7300 Energy chipset, 12GB of RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and a microSDXC card slot.

The Reno12 Pro has the same display, but with 12 GB of RAM and superior cameras.

DSCC says that shipments of OLED for tablets in Q1 2024 rose 131% from last year, to reach 1.72 million units, as Apple started to adopt OLEDs in its iPad tablets. In fact, shipments to Apple represented 47% of all OLED shipments in the quarter (following by Huawei at 25% and Samsung at 17%). 

DSCC sees the growth continuing to accelerate - and in Q2 2024 shipments will rise to 3.9 million units, or up 333% from Q2 2023, as Apple, Microsoft, Huawei and Samsung will all enjoy an increase in OLED tablet sales. 

The Zapp Group, which will celebrate its 325th anniversary in 2026 and has launched a major new investment project with the construction of a 12,000 m² production hall for precision foil at its Unna site, in Germany.

The company has come a long way in the past few centuries. Having started in the Leppe Valley of Germany as a small forging shop, Zapp is now a leading metals supplier and one of only a few suppliers in the world that can produce ultra-thin foil from stainless steel, cobalt nickel or titanium alloys. This major investment will further expand its dimensional spectrum down to thicknesses of up to 0.015 mm and widths of up to 650 mm.

The Philips 55BDL9151TO is a transparent OLED TV, aimed for commercial settings (this is not a consumer TV). The TV is based on a 55" FHD 45% transparency LGD WOLED panel. The transparent TV has a wood base and both HDMI and USB interfaces.

The Philips costs 66,900 Yuan in China, or around $9,200.

A report from Korea suggests that Dowoo Insys is planning to IPO in 2025. The company will list on the Korean Exchange, and it plans to file the preliminary information and documents by the end of the summer.

Dowoo Insys was established in 2010, to develop glass products for the display industry. The company's main product is thin flexible glass covers for foldable displays - UTG glass - which it supplies to Samsung Display (its main customer). Dowoo does not produce its own glass - it buys flexible glass from Schott and then treats it in its own facilities. 

Samsung's budget-friendly smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch FE, offers a 1.2" 396x396 Super AMOLED display, WearOS, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and advanced health monitoring.

The Galaxy Watch FE will ship globally in the summer of 2024, priced at $199.

The Motorola Edge 2024 smartphone is similar to the company's Edge 50 Fusion, but with an improved display, a 6.6" 1300 nits 144Hz 1080x2400 AMOLED display that is curved on two sides (produced by LG Display). Other specifications include a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage and a dual camera setup.

The Motorola Edge 2024 will ship in the US by the end of June 2024, for $550.

Omdia says that it expects the global smartwatch display market to reach 359 million units in 2024 (up from 259 million units in 2022). OLEDs hold a 37% market share (132 million units).

Omdia says that the leading smartwatch OLED producers, in the first half of 2024, are LG Display (Apple's main supplier), Everdisplay and Tianma - which together hold a 53% market share. China-based wearable OLED production accounts to 64% of the total market.

Corsair's Xeneon 34WQHD240-C gaming monitor is based on a curved 34" 240Hz 3440x1440 QD-OLED panel (produced by Samsung Display). The monitor has two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 and one USB Type-C DP port.

Corsair did not yet detail the price or release date of its 34WQHD240-C monitor.

DSCC says that foldable OLED shipments increased 46% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to last year, to reach almost 4 million units. 

BOE was leading the market in Q1 2024, with a market share of 48% (up from 43% in Q1 2023). The two leading foldable smartphone models were Huawei's Mate X5 and Pocket 2, using panels supplied by BOE. In fact Huawei had a market share of 55% in the foldable smartphone market.

Acer's new summer 2024 range of gaming monitors are all based on LGD's WOLED panels. First up we have the Predator X27U F3, with LG's latest and fastest 26.5" 2560x1440 480hz 0.01 ms GtG response time OLED display. The monitor also offers Type-C USB, DisplayPort and two HDMI 2.1 ports.

The Predator X32 X3 sports a 31.5" 3840x2160 WOLED display that offers a switchable refresh rate - either 4K at 240Hz or FHD at 480Hz. The X32 X3 has a 0.03 ms GtG response time, Type-C USB, DisplayPort and two HDMI 2.1 ports.

Finally, we have the Predator X34 X5, with a curved (1800 mm radius) 34" 3440x1440 WOLED display, 240Hz, 0.03 ms GtG response time, Type-C USB, DisplayPort and two HDMI 2.1 ports.

Xi'an Manareco New Materials announced that it intends to invest around $10 million (76.4 million Yuan) in Idemitsu Kosan's China-based Idemitsu Electronic Materials. Following this investment, Manareco's stake at the company will rise to 20%. 

Xi'an Manareco says that Idemitsu plans to move most of its OLED material production to its China-based company. Manareco is a strategic material supplier to Idemitsu, and it hopes to expand its OLED intermediate business. In addition, the company is developing and supplying OLED stack materials (such as EIL, HIL, ETL and more).

Researchers from Korea's KAIST, ETRI, and Dong-A University propose a new stretchable OLED display architecture, based on a 3D form that includes hidden sections that act both as active emitting areas and interconnectors. The idea is that as the OLED display is stretched, these areas pop into place and add to the emitting area of the OLED. The areas are basically hidden pixels that are only used when the display stretches.

To create this OLED device, the researchers attached ultrathin OLED films to a 3D rigid island array structure through quadaxial stretching, enabling precise, deformation-free alignment. The researchers explain that a portion of the ultrathin OLED is concealed by letting it ‘fold in’ between the adjacent islands in the initial, non-stretched condition and gradually surfaces to the top upon stretching. 

Vivo's Watch GT smartwatch offers a 1.85" 390x450 AMOLED display, Vivo's own Blue OS and heart rate and SpO2 sensors.

The Vivo Watch GT is now shipping in China, for about $120.

The Loewe Steller is the company's flagship 2024 OLED TV series, available in 42, 48-, 55-, 65-, 77-, 83-, and 97-inch. Some of these models (55/65/77/83) will use LG's latest MLA 4K 120Hz 3000-nits WOLED panels. Loewe's Stellar support Dolby Vision HDR, VRR and ALLM.

The Stellar is Loewe's first TV produced at its new Germany-based module line. It will ship later in 2024, starting at around $3,600 for the 42-inch model (and up to over $20,000 for the 97-inch model).

The OLED Toolbox offers a wide array of resources, including guides, projections, analyses, content library and profound insights into the OLED industry and market. Never before has it been so easy to gain access to a complete OLED industry resource.

The OLED Toolbox can be beneficial for many use cases: tuning R&D and marketing efforts, training new employees, market intelligence, identifying partners and customers, optimizing budgets and more. 

As the OLED Toolbox is a whole new concept, the video above can help clarify its purpose, explain what it is all about, and provide details the use cases. Contact us now for more information, and to get samples from the Toolbox. 

The Honor 200 smartphone offers a 6.7" 120Hz 4000 nits (peak) 1200x2664 OLED display, a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage.

The Honor 200 Pro has the same exact AMOLED display, but with stronger specifications.

Both smartphones are now shipping, starting at around $350 for the Honor 200

As OLED technologies are making inroads into the aerospace industry, LG Display has teamed up with Boeing and LIG Nex1 to introduce a new aircraft smart cabin concept, utilizing the company's latest OLED displays.

The three companies started collaborating back in 2020, to realize how OLEDs can benefit aircraft interior design. For this project, LG Display developed aircraft-specific OLED panels, ensuring higher reliability and safety compared to regular OLED panels. The new smart cabin concept includes a 55" OLED panel that is installed at the aircraft entrance, curved OLED at the aircraft's ceiling, 30-inch transparent OLED panels placed in the cabin partitions, and a 27-inch OLED panel in the crew galley.

According to a report from Korea, LG Display has started to produce 13.4" tandem AMOLED panels for Dell, to be used in the upcoming 2024 XPS 13 laptop. LGD will produce 100,000 such panels for Dell at its E6 production line (the same line used to produce Apple's iPad Pro displays).

The tandem OLED displays will enable longer lifetimes, and also increased brightness / efficiency. Interestingly, Dell says the displays will only feature a brightness of 400 nits. The full display specification: 13.4" 3K+ (2880x1800) 60Hz 400 nits AMOLED panels. 

The display industry's top conference, SID DisplayWeek 2024, took place two weeks ago in San Jose, California. This was an interesting event, and fruitful, and a good chance to see almost the entire industry in the same location. OLED is clearly the leading display technology, but it seems that there is not much new innovation, it's difficult to think of a demo or prototype or technology that we have not seen before. Next-generation technologies, mostly microLEDs and QD-ELs, were also very prominent. Here's a list of all our articles from SID:

• Samsung Displays shows its latest OLED and QD-EL displays at Displayweek 2024
• Samsung shows an inkjet-printed 18.2" QD-EL prototype 
• LG Display shows its latest OLED technologies at Displayweek 2024 
• LG Display developed a 10,000 nits OLED microdisplay 
• BOE shows new OLED displays at Displayweek 2024
• Innolux demonstrates microLED display prototypes at Displayweek 2024
• Impressions from the MicroLED Association's meeting at DisplayWeek 2024 
• TCL CSoT: OLED, MicroLED and QD-EL displays 
• TCL CSoT announced a $1 million prize to accelerate QD-EL technology
• AUO: impressive microLED displays at Displayweek 2024 
• Tianma shows its latest OLEDs and MicroLEDs at Displayweek 2024
• Tianma shows promising micro-Fluidic ePaper display 
• Visionox demonstrates its latest ViP OLED and Vistar's MicroLEDs 
• SEL demonstrates a 15,000 nits direct-emission tandem OLED microdisplay
• E Ink shows its latest ePaper displays, panels and solutions 
• MEGAMORPH demonstrates its graphene-based display technology at Displayweek 2024 

We hope this coverage will be useful, and we also came back with some insights and data that will be incorporated into the OLED Toolbox's next edition. We also shared several videos from the event - you can view them all here. 

Omdia says that China's OLED makers have been making rapid progress with their foldable OLED capabilities, to the point that in the first half of 2024, China's production of foldable OLED panels will surpass Korea's.

Omdia predicts that in the first half of 2024, Samsung Display will produce 5.7 million panels, while China's producers will produce 6.4 million panels. The market is set to grow quickly, from 10.7 million units in 2021 to 30 million panels in 2024. The market leader remains Samsung (47% in 2024H1), followed by BOE (40%), Visionox (9%) and TCL CSoT (4%).

ZOTAC's Zone is a portable PC gaming device, that has a 7" AMOLED display, Xbox-style buttons and two-stage adjustable triggers. Not much else is known about the device.

ZOTAC hasn't yet provided any details on specifications, price or availability. 

Visionox is the latest company to announce a new AMOLED production line, targeting the IT display market - laptops, monitors and tablets. The company said that it will best 55 billion Yuan (around $7.6 billion USD) to build a 8.6-Gen production line in Hefei, Anhui province.

Visionox's production line will have a monthly capacity of 32,000 substrates. The company did not share any details regarding the timeline of this project, or its financing.