flexible display screens ready for mass production in stock

Ladies and gentlemen, our dreams of flexible digital newspapers are nearly within reach: LG just announced that it has begun mass production of a 6-inch, 1024 x 768 e-paper screen that can bend by up to 40 degrees. We haven"t been able to find a press release, but several Korean publications are reporting that the plastic-based screen is shipping to Chinese manufacturers to build e-readers right away, and devices based on the technology could be available in Europe as soon as early April. LG is boasting that at 0.7mm thick, the entire display is as thin as a protective film for a phone"s screen. According to the reports, LG conducted 1.5-meter (about 5 foot) drop tests with the screen and smacked it with a rubber mallet with no ill effect. We"re waiting for the other shoe (or e-reader) to drop, but that sounds positively fantastic. Maybe we"ll get some bendable batteries to go with the screen, some day.

Founded by a Stanford PhD graduate, Royole has designed and is starting to mass-produce a super-thin flexible screen that could be used in everything from t-shirts to portable speakers.

It"s the stuff of science fiction, and plenty of tech trade shows — a screen so thin and flexible that it can be rolled up into a cylinder as small as a cigarette or hung on a wall like wallpaper.

Royole just opened a new factory in China that is already mass producing the displays, and the company is working with partners to get them installed in everything from t-shirts to automobiles to smartphones.

Royole"s screens are based on OLED technology, in which the lighting elements are built into the display itself. Unlike the OLED screens that are in some higher-end televisions, which are typically placed on a rigid base like glass, the lighting elements in Royole"s screens are placed on a flexible plastic base, so they can bend or roll up.

"The cool thing here is that we"re not limited by the form factor of the surface," said Liu, who founded Royole with some friends from Stanford after graduating from there with a PhD in electrical engineering. "They could be anywhere."

Royole, which was founded in 2012 and has raised $1.1 billion in funding, just brought its new factory online in June. The plant will be able to produce up to 50 million panels a year once it"s at full capacity, Liu said. That could help it feed a potentially burgeoning market for bendable gadgets.

Researchers have been trying to develop flexible screen technology since at least the early 1970s — first in the form of monochrome displays that were intended to replace printed pages, and then, much later, in the form of color ones that might replace the screens in TV or portable devices.

For much of the last decade, display makers including Samsung and LG have been showing off their flexible OLED screens and prototype of products made with them at trade shows.

Samsung"s Galaxy Round, a relatively obscure smartphone that came out that year, was one of the first gadgets that used a flexible screen way back in 2013. Because the display was placed behind a fixed plate of glass, so you couldn"t really tell that it was bendable. The only clue was that the front of the phone was concave.

Other smartphones since the Galaxy Round have also employed flexible displays, including the LG G Flex and the Edge versions of the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Note lines. More recently, the screens have started to make their way into even mainstream devices. Apple"s iPhone X, for example, has a flexible display behind its famously notched screen.

They were "a disappointing application of what that the technology could do," said Raymond Soneira, CEO of DisplayMate, a consulting firm for the display and TV industries.

Neither businesses nor consumers were ready for bendable or foldable gadgets when the first flexible displays started rolling off production lines five years ago, analysts said. Electronics makers generally hadn"t set up their supply chains to accommodate them or figured out how they might be able to take advantage of the screens" properties in new products. Apps hadn"t been written specifically for devices with bendable screens. And nobody had laid the groundwork for new kinds of flexible gadgets by marketing them to consumers.

Things may be different now. Next year, Samsung will reportedly introduce a phone with a foldable screen that"s built around its flexible display technology. Apple reportedly has a foldable phone in the works, too.

"You can"t make [phones] much bigger … and have them be carried by most consumers," Soneira said. "So you"ve got to move up to foldable, even rollable screens."

The release of foldable screen phones and other gadgets from major manufacturers will likely spur developers to start making apps designed specifically around those features. It"s also likely to inspire demand for other devices that take advantage of the properties of bendable screens.

Flexible screens will likely get their start by replacing other screens in devices we already recognize, including not just smartphones, but computer monitors and laptop computers, allowing manufacturers to make models that are slightly more innovative or resilient, said Ryan Martin, a principal analyst at ABI Research. But eventually, manufacturers are likely to get a lot more creative with them.

A flexible display "changes the realm of design as well as design thinking," Martin said. "You"re no longer confined to the four corners of a screen. You can make things more abstract."

At CES, the giant electronics trade show held in Las Vegas every January, LG has shown off a prototype for a car dashboard in which the speedometer, tachometer and other other gauges and buttons are displayed virtually on flexible screens that could be shaped to the contours of a car"s interior.

Although the company is going up against some of the biggest electronics companies around in LG and Samsung, Royole"s got several advantages, Liu said. Its displays are built on its own proprietary technology for which it has filed numerous patents, he said. That technology allows it to build screens that are a tenth as thick as those of competitors.

What"s more, because it"s using a different methodology for building its screens, it was able to get its factory up and running for about $1 billion, which is far less than what it would cost its competitors, he said.

The first devices with Royole"s screens should start showing up later this year. The company plans to sell T-shirts and hats with its flexible displays built in. Soon thereafter, it expects marketers to start using its screens to display advertisements in elevators, airports, shopping malls, and other places.

From there, the screens should start making its way into other products, both traditional and new, Liu said. When purchased in volume, they should be competitive in price to other types of displays, he said.

The global flexible display market size is expected to reach 220.75 billion in 2030 and grow at a CAGR of 34.83% during the forecast period (2021–2030). A flexible display is a visual output surface that is designed to be able to withstand being folded, bent, and twisted. Typically screens that use flexible displays are made of OLED displays. Flexible displays are becoming more prevalent in foldable technology such as smartphones, designed to be folded or closed like a book. Flexible displays are useful as they allow the device to be stored in a smaller space, such as a pocket while providing a larger screen size for media display.

Some of the major factors driving the adoption of connected and innovative solutions across the consumer electronics sector are the growing trend of smart homes and buildings, as well as the increasing demand for connected technologies. The incorporation of smart sensors into residential devices has increased the replacement cycle of new consumer electronics. The use of displays to control and communicate with the device is growing significantly.

For example, in July 2020, Samsung released the connected refrigerator SpaceMax Family Hub. It automates meal planning, allows consumers to see inside the refrigerator from anywhere, and users can watch their favorite TV shows while working in the kitchen on the refrigerator"s massive entertainment screen.

Aside from that, residential devices such as televisions are undergoing revolutionary changes. For example, the global demand for new TVs is expected to be solely for smart TVs; with increased access to high-speed internet, demand for smart TVs with better picture quality is increasing. With so many viewers consuming media from OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and others, the need to store data effectively is becoming critical. According to Bitmovin, the market is shifting toward a new generation of video codecs that offer 30 to 70% better compression than H.264.

With the proliferation of screen sizes, the number of pixels per inch in 8K decreases. Additionally, studies show that consumers are unable to distinguish 8K videos from 4K videos. However, due to cost reductions in the coming years, demand for 8K screens is expected to rise significantly in the coming years.

PC gaming has recently become a popular choice among millennial gamers. This shift is primarily due to a combination of factors, including improved gameplay quality, the availability of high-end hardware and software, and increased internet bandwidth. Today, more exciting and demanding technology, such as VR and 4K displays, is available. As a result, PC gamers are expected to upgrade their equipment accordingly, which is one of the factors driving sales of gaming-specific PCs and their accessories like gaming screens. Thus, increased demand for picture quality has boosted the demand for flexible displays.

With the increasing demand for higher picture quality and resolution, vendors are increasingly investing in product innovation. LG Display, for example, invested KRW 1,740 billion in 2020; large vendors with a larger market share can invest a larger share of revenues in innovation, which other vendors in this space do not have.

Aside from that, the flexible display market share is highly dynamic in terms of technology pricing. For example, in recent times, the market selling prices of TFT-LCD and OLED panels have been consistently falling, affecting the revenues of vendors operating in the market and posing a challenge to their growth in the product category.

The industry is highly competitive, and vendors operating in it face price and margin pressure as many vendors add production capacity to compete on price. Vendors from Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan are investing in expanding their production capacities, which significantly impacts global vendors" ability to remain sustainable and profitable in the market.

Furthermore, the new 8K displays are expected to decrease prices and sell for around USD 3,500 to 4,000 by 2022, down from their current average selling price of around USD 4,500. This is expected to have a negative impact on the margins of vendors operating in this space.

The ongoing evolution of smartphones and computers has aided in developing display technologies, with foldable and flexible displays emerging as the most recent landscape component. Curved displays have already gained traction among users through innovative TV screens, desktop monitors, and phones, so the market is expected to grow over the forecast period.

Flexible displays, which are being seriously discussed as a potentially disruptive technology for future handheld and other devices, are being investigated by smartphone behemoths such as LG, Samsung, and Huawei to deliver revolutionary designs to users.

However, cost increases, decreased finished product rates, price increases, a lack of product differentiation, seasonal demand patterns, and uncertainty about economic prospects pose significant demand growth challenges. In 2020, there will be more opportunities for flexible OLED displays due to a focus on cost reduction, adding new functions, implementing product differentiation, a fresh appearance, and industry demand for 5G models.

Understandably, the introduction of 5G will bring the ability to perform more tasks on a single device than was previously possible on previous networks, owing to the enhanced capabilities of new phones and laptops. Currently, the industry believes that flexible OLED displays are the best solution for the next generation smartphone market.

OLED is a new display technology that allows for more efficient displays and lighting panels. OLEDs are already being used in a variety of mobile devices and televisions. OLEDs are the most recent generation of display technology, offering superior performance and improved optical characteristics over older LED and LCD technologies.

Furthermore, smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung Z fold and LG G8X have used second-generation flexible OLED displays that can be bent. OLEDs were mainly used to create a market impression of foldable smartphones. Rolled OLEDs, on the other hand, are now making their way into the TV and smartphone markets.

Compared to other options, flexible displays made of OLED are more energy efficient. OLEDs are available in a very small factor, allowing manufacturers to build them as individual pixels. These are already being used in a variety of consumer electronics, such as curved OLED TVs, and are in high demand.

Due to the global shutdown, production of flexible displays fell precipitously in 2020 due to the global supply chain disruption. COVID-19 had an impact on the operations of not only flexible display manufacturers but also their suppliers and distributors.

In the short term, the failure of export shipments and poor domestic semiconductor demand compared to pre-COVID-19 levels are expected to impact negatively and slightly stagnant demand for semiconductor devices, affecting the flexible display market growth.

As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, several major economies have been placed on lockdown. Sales of electronic products have been hampered, and supply networks have been disrupted. Furthermore, many economies are losing a significant amount of revenue due to manufacturing plant closures. As a result, the general scenario has hampered the demand for flexible displays in 2020.

The market is expected to recover from mid of 2022 as people have made huge savings during the lockdown. The growing demand for high-quality pictures and the smart house is expected to drive the growth of the flexible display market.

However, the market faced challenges such as reduced workforce and delays in receiving components and materials. It caused an unexpected spike in panel pricing, with a month-to-month jump of more than 7%.

By display type, the OLED segment dominates the global market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.87%, generating a revenue of USD 175.95 billion by 2030. This OLED display can be subjected to a high degree of flexibility, consumes less energy, and is prominent in the market. In addition, OLED offers the potential for vast improvements in image quality and opens up new possibilities for device design.

Based on the substrate material, plastic acquires the largest share of the market. Plastic-based flexible displays are the most recent advancements. Plastic AMOLED panels are substantially thinner and lighter than traditional glass-based displays, allowing for slimmer devices or larger batteries.

Based on application, smartphones and tablets hold a prominent share in the global flexible display market. The smartphone and tablet segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30.96%, generating a revenue of USD 116.14 billion by 2030. The smartphone industry has been steadily developing and growing, both in terms of market size and models.

By geography, Asia-Pacific accounted for thelargest market share of around 43.78% in 2021. The APAC flexible display market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36.01% generating revenue of USD 100.82 billion by 2030.

The Asia-Pacific market landscape is primarily driven by significant market consolidation, resulting in a plethora of advanced display technologies that have dominated the market. Furthermore, Asian countries are the home of display manufacturing foundries, giving this region a dominant market position.

The majority of display manufacturers are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, with South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and China accounting for a sizable proportion of vendors operating and catering to various electronics manufacturers worldwide. Chinese panel manufacturers have continued to invest in new fabrication facilities and additional supplies due to Chinese government initiatives and support. Thus, Asia-Pacific is expected to be at the epicenter of the market due to the region"s growing penetration and consumer base for consumer electronics.

The initial market demand in the consumer electronics segment is expected to come primarily from emerging economies in APAC, North America, and Europe. The adoption of flexible OLED displays is anticipated to drive the market. The majority of the companies" manufacturing facilities and corporate offices are spread across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. LG Display, Samsung Electronics, Motorola Inc., and Koninklijke Philips NV are just a few of the companies with manufacturing facilities all over the world.

The end-user application settings and subsequent demand for various television set heavily influence the European market landscape. In the current market, European TV OEMs and brands use either an IPS panel or a VA panel, depending on their models and sales regions. For example, the VA panel may have a higher contrast ratio in a comparatively darker environment, whereas consumers in some European countries prefer a darker living room.

On December 29th, 2021, LG Display, launched its newest OLED TV technology ‘OLED EX’. This next-generation OLED EX display implements LG Display’s deuterium and personalized algorithm-based ‘EX-Technology’.

On April 19th, 2022, Samsung launched its stunning Neo QLED 8K and Neo QLED TV range, offering the most pristine picture quality and immersive soundscapes to transform living spaces.

LG Display Co. Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, Royole Corporation, e-ink Holdings, BOE Technology Group Co. Ltd, Flexenable are the top players in the market.

(Phys.org)—Is Samsung getting ready to release a line of flexible displays made of glass-replacing plastic? The right words in response may be "well, finally," or "well, maybe." The Wall Street Journalhas talked to a source who said that Samsung, in the words of the WSJ subheading, "Plans to Mass Produce Flexible Mobile-Device Screens" in the first half of next year. The source was not named and was only described as "a person familiar with the situation." Samsung has tantalized techies and consumers with its futuristic videos showing a beautiful-life day using wearable wrist computers, auto dashboard display screens, location-finding smartphones, and wall mounted computer screens of plastic rather than glass.

Expectations are that Samsung, as part of the grand mix, is to start mass production of smartphone screens using bendable plastic rather than glass. According to the WSJ report, Samsung"s flexible displays will incorporate OLEDs.

Analysts believe the move into mass production would be a real business advantage as smart-device makers in competition with Samsung scramble for attention and market share with their designs and feature sets. Some of the reasons why a Samsung customer would favor plastic rather than conventional glass would be lightness and durability. As for Samsung, the technology could also help lower manufacturing costs as well as differentiate its products from rivals, said an analyst at Shinyoung Securities in the WSJ report.

Hopes that Samsung would not miss the 2012 mark in flex displays for television were shelved this year with reports of problems preventing release of the 55-inch OLED TVs. The idea had been to sell them in time for the London Olympics.

Samsung is considered one of the leaders in OLED display research and the leader in (Active Matrix) AMOLED, where a transistor next to each pixel brings faster response time. OLED Displays are thinner, more efficient and offer better picture quality than LCD or Plasma displays.

As for smartphones, back in March, analysts were already talking about how Samsung was looking at its plastic-backed AMOLED devices to make lightweight, ultra-thin phones with foldable screens. Analysts said they expected to see Samsung apply plastic substrate-based, bendable or curved displays for smartphones with the first products carrying a design where a screen is folded over the edges of a phone, so that the display continues on to the sides. The display would be unbreakable.

Royole recently began the mass production stage at its "Flexible Display Campus," the company"s division dedicated to creating innovative malleable display technologies. The company unveiled its first flexible display panel in 2014 with limited specifications, followed by its first full-color "flexible+" display in 2018. Now, the company has begun mass production of scalable, sizeable, flexible displays with full color gamuts and standard aspect ratios.

Companies can request panels through Royole"s sales inquiry system, which involves sending an email with necessary information such as size, quantity, and other specifications. According to Royole, its displays now boast a thickness of just 0.1mm and a peak bend radius of 1mm, meaning the displays can functionally be bent into a full circle, if desired.

Kateeva’s YIELDjet system (pictured here) is a massive version of an inkjet printer. Large glass or plastic substrate sheets are placed on a long, wide platform. A head with custom nozzles moves back and forth, across the substrate, coating it with OLED and other materials.

Based on years of Institute research, MIT spinout Kateeva has developed an “inkjet printing” system that could cut manufacturing costs enough to pave the way for mass-producing flexible and large-screen OLED displays.

Flexible smartphones and color-saturated television displays were some highlights at this year’s Consumer Electronics Showcase, held in January in Las Vegas.

Many of those displays were made using organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs — semiconducting films about 100 nanometers thick, made of organic compounds and sandwiched between two electrodes, that emit light in response to electricity. This allows each individual pixel of an OLED screen to emit red, green, and blue, without a backlight, to produce more saturated color and use less energy. The film can also be coated onto flexible, plastic substrates.

But there’s a reason why these darlings of the showroom are not readily available on shelves: They’re not very cost-effective to make en masse. Now, MIT spinout Kateeva has developed an “inkjet printing” system for OLED displays — based on years of Institute research — that could cut manufacturing costs enough to pave the way for mass-producing flexible and large-screen models.

In doing so, Kateeva aims to “fix the last ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the OLED-display industry — which is manufacturing,” says Kateeva co-founder and scientific advisor Vladimir Bulovic, the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology, who co-invented the technology.

Called YIELDjet, Kateeva’s technology platform is a massive version of an inkjet printer. Large glass or plastic substrate sheets are placed on a long, wide platform. A component with custom nozzles moves rapidly, back and forth, across the substrate, coating it with OLED and other materials — much as a printer drops ink onto paper.

An OLED production line consists of many processes, but Kateeva has developed tools for two specific areas — each using the YIELDjet platform. The first tool, called YIELDjet FLEX, was engineered to enable thin-film encapsulation (TFE). TFE is the process that gives thinness and flexibility to OLED devices; Kateeva hopes flexible displays produced by YIELDjet FLEX will hit the shelves by the end of the year.

The second tool, which will debut later this year, aims to cut costs and defects associated with patterning OLED materials onto substrates, in order to make producing 55-inch screens easier.

By boosting yields, as well as speeding up production, reducing materials, and reducing maintenance time, the system aims to cut manufacturing costs by about 50 percent, says Kateeva co-founder and CEO Conor Madigan SM ’02 PhD ’06. “That combination of improving the speed, improving the yield, and improving the maintenance is what mass-production manufacturers want. Plus, the system is scalable, which is really important as the display industry shifts to larger substrate sizes,” he says.

Traditional TFE processing methods enclose the substrate in a vacuum chamber, where a vapor of the encapsulating film is sprayed onto the substrate through a metal stencil. This process is slow and expensive — primarily because of wasted material — and requires stopping the machine frequently for cleaning. There are also issues with defects, as the coating that hits the chamber walls and stencil can potentially flake off and fall onto the substrate in between adding layers.

But moisture, and even some air particles, can sneak into the chamber, which is deadly to OLEDs: When electricity hits OLEDs contaminated with water and air particles, the resulting chemical reactions reduce the OLEDs’ quality and lifespan. Any displays contaminated during manufacturing are discarded and, to make up for lost yield, companies boost retail prices. Only two companies now sell OLED television displays, with 55-inch models selling for $3,000 to $4,000 — about $1,000 to $3,000 more than their 55-inch LCD and LED counterparts.

YIELDjet FLEX aims to solve many TFE issues. A key innovation is encasing the printer in a nitrogen chamber, cutting exposure to oxygen and moisture, as well as cutting contamination with particles — notorious for diminishing OLED yields — by 10 times over current methods that use vacuum chambers. “Low-particle nitrogen is the best low-cost, inert environment you can use for OLED manufacturing,” Madigan says.

In its TFE process, the YIELDjet precisely coats organic films over the display area as part of the TFE structure. The organic layer flattens and smoothes the surface to provide ideal conditions for depositing the subsequent layers in the TFE structure. Depositing onto a smooth, clean surface dramatically improves the quality of the TFE structure, enabling high yields and reliability, even after repeated flexing and bending, Madigan says.

Kateeva’s other system offers an improvement over the traditional vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE) technique — usually somewhere in the middle of the production line — that uses shadow masks (thin metal squares with stenciled patterns) to drop red, green, and blue OLED materials onto a substrate.

This isn’t necessarily bad for making small, smartphone screens: “If a substrate sheet with, say, 100 small displays on its surface has five defects, you may toss five, and all the rest are perfect,” Madigan explains. And smaller shadow masks are more reliable.

But manufacturers start to lose money when they’re tossing one or two large-screen displays due to particle contamination or defects across the substrate.

Kateeva’s system, which, like its TFE system, is enclosed in a nitrogen chamber, precisely positions substrates — large enough for six 55-inch displays — beneath print heads, which contain hundreds of nozzles. These nozzles are tuned to deposit tiny droplets of OLED material in exact locations to create the display’s pixels. “Doing this over three layers removes the need for shadow masks at larger scales,” Madigan says.

As with its YIELDjet FLEX system, Madigan says this YIELDjet product for OLED TV displays can help manufacturers save more than 50 percent over traditional methods. In January, Kateeva partnered with Sumitomo, a leading OLED-materials supplier, to further optimize the system for volume production.

The idea for Kateeva started in the early 2000s at MIT. Over several years, Madigan, Bulovic, Schmidt, Chen, and Leblanc had become involved in a partnership with Hewlett-Packard (HP) on a project to make printable electronics.

They had developed a variety of methods for manufacturing OLEDs — which Madigan had been studying since his undergraduate years at Princeton University. Other labs at that time were trying to make OLEDs more energy efficient, or colorful, or durable. “But we wanted to do something completely different that would revolutionize the industry, because that’s what we should be doing in a place like MIT,” Madigan says.

A few years before, Bulovic had cut his teeth in the startup scene with QD Vision — which is currently developing quantum-dot technology for LED television displays — and was able to connect the group with local venture capitalists.

Madigan, on the other hand, was sharpening his entrepreneurial skills at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Among other things, the Entrepreneurship Lab class introduced him to the nuts and bolts of startups, including customer acquisition and talking to investors. And Innovation Teams helped him study markets and design products for customer needs. “There was no handbook, but I benefitted a lot from those two classes,” he says.

So in 2012, Kateeva pivoted, switching gears to its YIELDjet system. Today, the system is a platform, Bulovic says, that, in the future, can be tweaked to print solid stage lighting panels, solar cells, nanostructure circuits, and luminescent concentrators, among other things. “All those would be enabled by the semiconductor printer Kateeva has been able to develop,” he says. “OLED displays are just the first application.”

OLED is an emerging display technology that enables beautiful and efficient displays and lighting panels. OLEDs are already being used in smartphones, laptops, wearables, tablets and TVs, and many of OLEDs are flexible ones.

A flexible OLED is based on a flexible substrate (usually polyimide). The first generation of OLEDs produced on these were not really flexible from the user perspective. The device maker bends the displays, or curves it - but the final user is not able to actually bend the device. These first-gen flexible OLEDs are adopted many premium smartphones, for example the Samsung edge-type Galaxy phones or Apple"s latest iPhones. A plastic-based OLED has several advantages especially in mobile devices - the displays are lighter, thinner and more durable compared to glass based displays.

Second generation flexible OLED displays can be bent by the user - these can be used for example to create foldable smartphones - the first range of which started shipping in 2019. Rollable OLEDs are also now entering the market for both TVs and smartphones.

While several companies (including Samsung, LG, BOE and others) are producing OLED displays, it is not straightforward to find a good and reliable supply of these displays.

If you are interested in buying a flexible OLED panel for your project or device, look no further. Our OLED Marketplace offers several flexible OLEDs, which can be ordered through us with ease.

A report from ETNews claims that Samsung Display is ready to expand its foldable-display business and start selling to companies other than Samsung Electronics" phone division. Flexible panels were previously exclusive to Samsung"s phone division, but the report says Samsung Display plans to sell 1 million panels this year in the open market. ETNews quotes a source saying "multiple Chinese smartphones markets" are working with Samsung and plan to ship devices in the second half of 2021.

A million panels isn"t a huge supply compared to the ~350 million smartphones sold annually, but that is about the size of the foldable market in these early days. Canalys" last numbers said 1.74 million foldables were sold from September 2019 to June 2020, which represents the first generation of foldables, before the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Samsung hopes to see that number grow a lot in 2021, with ETNews reporting Samsung Display will supply 10 million foldable displays to the phone division.

It doesn"t sound like the third parties buying from Samsung will have a lot of wiggle room in terms of form factor. According to the report, Samsung is supplying two types of displays: one that folds across the horizontal axis like the Galaxy Z Flip, and one that folds across the vertical axis like the Galaxy Z Fold. The industry isn"t quite sure what a flexible display smartphone should look like, and at trade shows, various companies have pitched all sorts of wild form factors. There are concepts for rollable display smartphones, outward-folding displays like the Huawei Mate X, and tri-folding smartphones that fold up like a wallet or a brochure. It doesn"t sound like Samsung will be humoring any of those form factors just yet.

This report signals an end of Samsung"s exclusivity period on its foldable display technology, which has been an exception to the way Samsung normally does business. Samsung Display and the Galaxy phone division are both under the "Samsung Electronics" label, but often the various divisions of Samsung treat each other like any other customer. If your goal is "sell as many phones as possible," it would be a good strategy to keep any special technologies in house, but if you"re focused on making as much money as possible, it"s better to sell to the entire industry. As a whole conglomerate, Samsung makes more money selling iPhone parts to Apple than it does selling Galaxy Phones to consumers. We recently saw a good example of this "components-first" approach with the rise of faster-refresh-rate OLED smartphone displays, where OnePlus, Google, and others were using Samsung-made 90Hz OLED displays a generation before Samsung. Advertisement

The foldable displays are special, though. Samsung Display says it invested six years and $130 million in R&D to bring foldable displays to market, and so far, the phone division has had exclusive access to the technology. Presumably, the plan was that Samsung Electronics would have a huge head start over the competition and would be the only company selling Foldable phones for a few years. Samsung"s plans didn"t work out, though. According to Korean prosecutors, Samsung"s foldable display technology was stolen in 2018 and sold to "two Chinese companies" that have never been officially named. A report from Nikkei Asia pegs China"s biggest display manufacturer, BOE, as a recipient of the stolen display technology, and that certainly seems plausible given that BOE is the closest thing Samsung has to competition in the foldable-display market.

BOE foldable displays power Samsung"s two biggest foldable rivals, the Huawei Mate X and the Moto Razr. Like we listed above, there are plenty of other companies that bring prototype foldable smartphones to trade shows, but as far as products that are actually brave enough to come to market, there are devices powered by Samsung and BOE and maybe one or two tiny boutique outlets like Royale. ETNews still qualifies Samsung as the only "mass market" flexible-display panel provider, a fine conclusion given that other devices seem to mostly be paper launches with either minimal distribution or constant stock problems. If you want to zoom in on the extremely small foldables segment, a report from industry tracker Display Supply Chain Consultants recently put Samsung"s 2020 foldable smartphone market share at 88 percent.

The webinar will feature CEO Michael Robinson, who will update the Company’s operations and outline Ynvisible"s accomplishments, the business perspective around these accomplishments, and what to anticipate from Ynvisible and management going forward.LEARN MORE>LEARN MORE>SIGN UP TO WEBINAR

Printed e-paper displays from Ynvisible is an enabling technology for digital signage and the retail sector. Join the webinar on April 28 and hear directly from our lead customers the reasons why.read more & sign up

We have seen enough ugly segmented LCDs and LEDs. The time has come to try something more visually appealing. Experiment with different shapes, forms, and colors whilst being cost-effective.Learn more 

Choosing our e-paper displays will reduce cost at both the component level and the system level. Roll-to-roll screen-printing processes mean ultra-low-cost mass production.Read more about mass production 

“With the TempSafe Electrocard, we now expand our solutions offering with a temperature measuring electronic smart-label, a fully customizable time/temperature indicator solution, that can achieve sub-zero temperatures, as well as visually indicate Above and Below thresholds with Ynvisible´s e-paper displays."

"We are very pleased to be able to join forces with Ynvisible to fuel the development of our digital sensor labels. After recent breakthroughs with our sensors, we are now ready to take the next step to produce a prototype, and we believe Ynvisible to be the optimal partner for this because of their experience and cutting-edge technology within printed displays and electronics."

"Our clients are waiting for the first deliveries of the Mimbox. We will start industrial-scale production after the upcoming pilots. We"ve already found Ynvisible to be a great partner and value their services in design, system integration, prototyping through to production of the e-paper displays."

At OTI Lumionics we are developing advanced materials—by design—using quantum simulations, machine learning and real-world testing in pilot production. We are currently focused on key enabling materials for OLED displays that will be used in next-generation consumer electronics and automotive. Our advanced electrode materials, and associated manufacturing technology, are being used to build transparent displays and lighting.

We work closely with our partners and customers to design new materials that are mass-production ready. Using our computational Materials Discovery Platform, we are able to rapidly iterate new materials, allowing fast turn around time to meet our customers’ needs.

Most display panels are sandwiched between layers of glass making them rigid and also pretty breakable. Samsung Display has just filed a patent application for a new flexible AMOLED display technology, called “Youm”, that does away with the glass layers, replacing them with a special plastic film. The result is a flexible display, which can even be rolled up or folded, that according to Samsung is unbreakable and lighter than conventional displays.

This isn’t the first flexible display technology we’ve seen and Samsung has been toying with flexible panels for a while, but the company is said to now be ready to mass produce the panels with a probable 2012 release.

Now as far as applications go you can put your imagination at work as the possibilities are endless. The screens can wrap around curvy gadgets and take all kinds of different shapes. We are also imagining foldable tablets or even ‘tube-form’ tablets where you pull the display out of the enclosure. The key is that now manufacturers could pretty much integrate a display into anything.

Shown avove is a 5-inch curved OLED TV that uses LG Display"s technology. LG Display identified the OLED business as its next cash generator to beat the industry"s cyclical patterns. / Korea Times fileFirm releases displays with bendable screens

LG Display is expected to solidify its leadership in the display market as it will mass-produce a new flexible smartphone panel for major clients from the fourth quarter of this year.

LG spokesman Frank Lee said that his company is looking to meet "the rapid need for display advancements." Lee stressed upcoming flexible displays, which are bendable and unbreakable, could be the next innovation in display-making technology.

According to the company, LG is investing in flexible displays for mobile devices and new high-tech panels, called organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels, which support ultra high-definition (UHD).

"We have completed the development of our first flexible displays. We will mass produce flexible displays from the fourth quarter of this year," the company said in a statement to The Korea Times.

"We will apply a 4.5th generation glass-cutting technology for the OLED flexible displays. Monthly capacity for the line was set as 12,000 sheets," according to the company statement.

Officials also hinted at selling the screens to other major mobile producers because the company predicts its flexible displays will become the latest mobile trend.

Samsung Display is still testing its flexible products and trying to increase production yields. It"s highly unlikely that the soon-to-be-released Samsung Electronics" Galaxy Note 3 will have a flexible screen due to manufacturing-related issues.

"Flexible OLEDs will entice handset manufacturers amid growing appetites for a vivid picture, appealing design and thinner displays. The latest development by LG Display should earn a big stake in the growing market," said Woori Investment Securities analyst Kim Yang-jae.

Kim said LG"s shift toward flexible displays would help the firm beat the industry"s conventional cyclical patterns, making LG one of the few companies that can steadily generate profit regardless of market uncertainties.

The company, which is the first to mass produce OLED screens and curved OLEDs for televisions, is in the process of developing OLED TV screens that support UHD viewing quality.

"LG Display is developing UHD OLED TV screens. For enhanced brightness, we plan to switch the existing ‘bottom-emission" tech into ‘top-emission" tech. The company also has interests in developing materials that can help OLED applications extend their lifespan," said Lim.

According to LG officials, the 65-inch and 77-inch OLED panels will be produced at its M1 pilot line inside the P9 factory in Paju. The M1 line will house more equipment to produce bigger screens, and the M2 line will be mass-produced starting next year.

"This is a strategic decision and it makes sense. With LG"s strong client base and LG Electronics" television business improving, having an affordable lineup will pay off," said Woori analyst Kim.

As far back as March 2015, Samsung was rumored to have been working on a curved smartphone with a bendable display. An official from the company’s Samsung Display division told Business Korea that commercialization of foldable smartphones “would be possible” in 2016.

That prediction didn’t come to pass, of course, but rumblings of a flexible Samsung smartphone persisted. In November, the Korea Herald, quoting anonymous sources, described Samsung as “cautious” about the release of a flexible smartphone, but on track. And in early January, reports emerged that the company was prepping a foldable smartphone for the third quarter of this year, albeit contingent on “marketability” and “profitability.”

The most recent rumors suggest a smartphone that folds out into a 7-inch tablet, likely with an OLED screen. Last year at the SDI conference in San Francisco, Samsung showed a flexible 5.7-inch, 1080p display that could roll up like a scroll.

Samsung’s not the only one exploring the idea of flexible devices. Reports suggest that LG is preparing to commercially release devices with flexible screens later this year, and that it has already started retrofitting one of its factories with the infrastructure needed to mass produce a flexible-display device. And the company’s signed related contracts with Ignis Innovation, a Canadian company that builds flexible circuits.

But it will take time to ramp up production. “The development of display technology that creates a virtual space on glass is already completed, and even a promotional prototype is available,” an LG official told the Korea Herald in 2015. “However, it will take time until the product becomes commercialized due to mass production according to demand and supply.”

Even Microsoft is exploring the idea of a transforming smartphone. In January, the company filed a patent for flexible devices with dual and triple hinges and a variety of screen sizes.

MicroLED displays show great promise, as the technology enables emissive displays that can offer performance on par with OLED displays and higher brightness and efficiency. In addition, these displays can offer higher lifetimes and less burn-in.

However, the production of microLED displays is still very challenging - with many issues that are yet to be resolved - around the LED epiwafer growth, the transfer process, RGB backplanes, inspection and repair, and more. Even after billions of dollars that have gone into microLED display technologies R&D, display makers are not ready for actual mass production.

MicroLED displays are suitable for many display applications - AR/VR microdisplays, simple displays for fitness bands, smartwatches, smartphones, tablets, IT displays and of course TVs and even large-area format displays. Interestingly, looking at the display industry split by display size, it currently seems as if the first applications to be commercialized are on both ends of the spectrum - AR displays, small simple displays (for fitness bands, automotive HVAC displays, etc) and large-area TVs.

Most analysts agree that microLED displays will find a market, and that the industry will experience fast growth starting in the near future. But the question remains - when will microLEDs be commercialized? Some believe that actual mass production of displays in a meaningful way will not happen before 2030 or so. Some are more optimistic, seeing mass production starting in about 3-5 years.

Our own opinion is that microLEDs may find applications in some niche areas in the near future - we see small passive-matrix displays for premium devices as the first possible application, followed by large-area TVs and finally microdisplays for AR/VR.

All of these applications do not require, however, large amounts of displays. These are all quite niche applications in terms of number of units, and in terms of display area (AR could be an exception, if this new application takes off as some analysts foresee).

Omdia, for example, sees around 5 million microLED displays shipping in 2025, which will generate around $7 billion in revenues. By 2027, the market will grow to over $11 billion in revenues. These are large revenues - but keep in mind that compared to the total display industry (estimated at over $200 billion) it is relatively low.

Personally, we don"t like giving forecasts, but it is likely that many years will pass before we see meaningful microLED display production in major applications. We did run a poll on our social media channels (Twitterand LinkedIn), the results of which you can see above. Most people do believe that microLED displays will be here before 2025 - but then again this depends on how you define "mass production" in the display industry.

Most people agree that microLED displays aren"t here yet due to the technical challenges still facing the industry. There is, however, another reason why microLED display adoption may be further away than we realize. Even if microLED displays can produced at large enough volumes, will the benefits of microLED technology be enough to convince consumers and device makers to switch from OLED displays? Especially if costs are higher?

High-efficiency is crucial, but mostly for mobile applications. For monitors and TVs, this is less so. In addition, as we already covered in a previous article, as the LED chips get smaller, the efficiency drops. In addition, when viewing the total display system efficiency, the benefits of microLEDs are not dramatic - and may only reach 20-30% improvement in power consumption over state-of-the-art OLEDs.

Display lifetime is indeed a problem for current OLEDs, as the emissive nature of OLEDs coupled with its limited lifetime results in image retention - or burn-in. The lifetime of in-organic LEDs is much higher than that of their organic counterparts - which means that image retention in microLED displays won"t be as common as it is in OLED displays.

But how much of a problem is burn-in, really? Currently OLED makers are producing over 400 million smartphone AMOLED panels each year, which are adopted by all leading phone makers, including Apple, Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi. Many people replace their phones after 2-3 years, and actual cases of smartphone display burn-in aren"t really that common. Will consumers pay more for a display just because it is less likely to feature a problem that they do not really experience?

The same goes for TVs, tablets and laptops - millions such devices are produced each year with OLED displays, and consumers are quite happy with them. I can personally say that I have a 2016 LG OLED TV, and have had my share of OLED smartphones - none of which demonstrated any burn-in so far.

So, microLEDs do offer a meaningful advantage of high brightness and high efficiency, and this may enable it to penetrate markets in which these are real pain points - AR comes to mind, and also wearable displays. And this is indeed display segments for which analysts are optimistic for microLED adoption.

Another interesting aspect of MicroLED technology is that it enables innovative display architectures (for example a seamless tiled display) and business models (breaking down display production into several stages, which cannot really be done with OLED or LCD production). We may be surprised by the implications of these innovations.

Flexible plastic OLCD displays will soon be a commercial reality, offering exceptional display integration potential for an almost limitless range of applications. Here are the key things you need to know about this exciting technology.

1) They’re flexible – in both senses of the word.It may seem like stating the obvious, but OLCD displays are lightweight, extremely thin and virtually unbreakable. This allows them to be wrapped around virtually any surface you encounter on a daily basis, with a bend radius down to just 10 mm.

2) They can be cut to almost any shape.Unlike glass, which is difficult to manufacture in anything but round or rectangular designs, OLCD displays can be quickly and easily cut to fit the shape of your product. You can even cut holes in the display without affecting performance, offering straightforward integration of anything from speakers and cameras to watch hands and toggle switches.

3) They have a low manufacturing temperature.The entire process takes place at below 100 °C, compared to 300-500 °C for silicon-based transistors. This dramatically reduces the cost of manufacturing flexible displays, by simplifying handling and allowing the use of lower cost plastics, as well as drastically lowering energy consumption during manufacturing.

4) They are scalable. The low cost and simple manufacturing process for OLCDs can be scaled to large sizes using standard equipment. This allows flexible plastic displays to be used for everything from smart watches and notebooks to ultra-thin, bezel-free monitors and TVs in the future.

5) They offer all the benefits of glass LCD displays. By sharing many of the components of traditional LCD displays (as well as the supply chain), OLCDs are a known quantity, with no trade-off in screen performance compared to their glass counterparts. They are robust enough to deal with vibrations and large temperature variations, and can be made bright enough for outdoor use without compromising lifespan, ideal for use in vehicles as well as consumer electronics.

This flexible display technology, developed by our world-class team, is ready to be brought to mass production. We can’t wait to see the innovative and unexpected uses OLCD displays are put to in the future. If you are looking for a flexible display solution, get in touch with us at info@flexenable.com.

While Samsung will continue to supply approximately 80 per cent of iPhone displays, rumours claim that a little-known company called BOE looks set to become Apple’s second-largest OLED supplier. Not only is this a sign that Apple’s lowest-cost iPhone 12 model will likely make the leap from LCD to OLED this year, but it’s also a sign that Apple is looking to diversify which manufacturers it uses, and potentially looking to ready itself for a move into the display market itself.

You, like many of us when we first read the rumours, are probably wondering who the hell BOE is, and how it managed to score such a big deal despite its relatively unknown status. However, BOE is, in fact, the largest display manufacturer in China, supplying screens for smartphones, TVs and other electronic devices and home appliances.

The company, which was founded in Bejing in 1993 and acquired SK Hynix"s STN-LCD and OLED businesses back in 2001, is ranked second in the world when it comes to flexible OLED shipments, holding a market share of 11 per cent during the first quarter of this year. It, naturally, is still a long way behind market leader Samsung, which owned 81 per cent market share of the OLED market in the same quarter. Still, with a sizable chunk of the OLED market already under its belt, it perhaps won’t come as too much of a surprise – now, at least – that the firm already has some big-name allies.

BOE’s display technology is currently being utilised in Huawei"s most popular smartphone models, including the high-end P and Mate series, and it reportedly will manufacturer the palm-stretching screen set to appear on this year’s Huawei Mate 40.

BOE even provided the flexible OLED used in the foldable Huawei Mate X, which has proven way more reliable than Samsung’s flexible OLED efforts. Perhaps, then, it’s somewhat unsurprising that Samsung is reportedly considering using BOE screens for its future devices, likely at the expense of its own industry-dominating Samsung Display unit.

BOE’s surprising alliance with Apple isn’t the only time the two companies have worked together, either; the Chinese manufacturer already makes LCD screens for Apple"s older iPhones, and its tiny OLED panels are currently used in some Apple Watch models. It’s unclear how much BOE and Apple’s latest deal is worth, but it’s likely in the billions. According to online reports, Samsung’s deal with the iPhone maker is thought to be worth around $20 billion annually, so if BOE manages to secure 20 per cent of Apple’s display orders going forward, such a deal could be worth as much as $4bn.

Although BOE has managed to muscle its way into Apple’s exclusive list of OLED suppliers, and has invested heavily in facilities and equipment in order to meet the firm’s demands, the new partnership hasn’t got off to a flying start. According to reports, the company’s flexible OLED panels have not yet passed Apple’s final validation. This means, according to rumours, that BOE’s screens might not show up in the first batch of iPhone 12 models, and will instead start shipping on handsets at the beginning of 2021, with Apple instead set to re-increase its reliance on LG in the short term.

Scenarios like this, along with the fact that Apple is clearly looking to lessen its reliance on big-name display makers, makes us think that it won’t be long until the company ultimately stops relying on others altogether; after all, it’s no secret that Apple wants to control every aspect of its hardware development.

The display market could be Apple’s next target. Not only does the company already manufacturer screen technology in the form of its Pro Display XDR, but a recent Bloomberg report claims that Apple is “designing and producing its own device displays” and is making a “significant investment” in MicroLED panels. This technology utilises newer light-emitting compounds that make them brighter, thinner and less power-intense than the current OLED displays.

Apple’s efforts in MicroLED are reportedly in the “advanced stages”; the company has applied for more than 30 patents, and recent rumours suggest the firm is also considering investing over $330 million in a secretive MicroLED factory with the goal of bringing the technology to its future devices.