The rollable 4K OLED TV that LG Electronics introduced at CES 2019 (see 1901070026) has arrived in the U.S. as a made-to-order $100,000 offering on LG.com under the elite LG Signature sub-brand, said the vendor Friday. Customers who order the “OLED R” product are treated to “white glove delivery and installation” under LG Signature's Concierge Service. At “full view,” the OLED R functions as a 65-inch TV, and the screen retracts for two other modes into a base that doubles as a Dolby Atmos sound system.

Kopin signed a multiyear agreement with a top Japanese electronics company to develop “superbright” full-color LED microdisplays on silicon for augmented- and virtual-reality headsets, it said Thursday. Kopin didn’t name the partner that produces “advanced consumer products.” Kopin will contribute proprietary backplane silicon wafers and the partner will develop bonding and color conversion processes, it said. They expect to be able to demo prototypes within two years,

LCD TV panel prices are “peaking” in July, and will likely decline for the rest of 2021, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. The demand surge from the pandemic “has eased and industry supply has caught up,” it said: “Even with the declines in the second half, prices at year-end will remain higher than they were in December 2020 and dramatically higher than their all-time lows.” The higher panel prices “have led to an unprecedented increase in TV prices in the US, which will hinder demand,” said DSCC. “The path of the pandemic continues to suggest a headwind for global TV demand,” as the world’s developed economies open up, removing “the stay-at-home spur, while emerging economies are still struggling with COVID and suffering an economic slowdown.” TVs imported to the U.S. from all countries in 2021's first five months had $289.77 in average customs value, up 19% from January-May 2020, reported the Census Bureau.

Growing penetration in laptops, tablets and desktop monitors will buoy OLED panels to surpass $60 billion in global revenue by 2025 from $42.5 billion this year, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Tuesday. Apple is expected to bow its first OLED-based iPad in 2023, and Samsung Display is seen remaining aggressive in OLED laptop displays after 2021, said DSCC. Samsung Display and LG Display “will target the OLED monitor market with their TV panels through multi-model glass production,” it said. DSCC upgraded its OLED forecasts for 2022-2025 by 40% for tablets, 13% for notebooks and 238% for monitors, it said.

Recent history is bucking the decadeslong trend that TV prices “never go up,” blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants co-founder Bob O’Brien Monday. The TV consumer price “sub-index” from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows TV pricing hit an all-time low in October but increased in six of the seven months since, he said. The unprecedented increase in LCD TV panel prices “has now brought an unprecedented increase in U.S. TV prices,” he said. The latest report shows that TV prices increased 6% in May from the same 2020 month, he said. “For the entire history of the flat panel display industry, LCD costs have declined over time, as economies of scale, yield improvements, and shifts to lower-wage countries drove down costs in a highly competitive industry,” said O’Brien. “By 2021, we may have reached the end of that road.”

Display Supply Chain Consultants seeks speakers for the online forum it’s producing Nov. 3-4 on displays for artificial- and virtual-reality applications, said the company Monday. Presentations are sought on next-generation displays with high resolution and wide field of view for AR and VR products, plus on advances in OLED patterning and OLED brightness for microdisplay headsets. DSCC is projecting that annual revenue for AR/VR displays will expand by a 51.6% compound annual growth rate, reaching $4.2 billion in sales globally by 2026.

LG announced a five-year panel warranty on its 2021 flagship G1 OLED TVs sold in the U.S., it emailed Friday. The warranty applies to 55-, 65- and 77-inch G1 OLED evo series models, effective with the retail purchase date. It covers parts and labor the first year, parts only in years two-five.

Global flat-panel display revenue is projected to rise 29% this year to a record $152 billion, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Thursday. Strong demand will combine with a “dramatic increase” in panel prices to drive the growth, it said. Though DSCC doesn’t expect the revenue surge to be repeated beyond 2021, industry revenue “will settle at a new, higher plateau, allowing better profitability for the entire display supply chain,” it said.

Q1 shipments of advanced TVs increased 70% year over year, reaching 3.8 million sets globally, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Tuesday. DSCC defines advanced TVs as including all OLED sets, 8K LCD TVs and all LCD TVs with quantum dot technology. Though smaller screen sizes of advanced TVs recorded the biggest gains in Q1 a year earlier, “in the first quarter of 2021 it was all about the biggest sizes,” it said. Shipments of 75-inch advanced LCD TVs increased 158% year over year to 336,000, and advanced LCD TVs larger than 75 inches increased 103% to 123,000, said DSCC. Q1 shipments of OLED TVs 77 inches and larger increased 430% to 85,000, “more than the total cumulative volume of this category for all years up to the end of 2019,” it said.

The photomask market for Gen 10.5 displays was “frozen” in Photronics’ fiscal Q2 ended May 2, said CEO Peter Kirlin on a Wednesday earnings call. Photronics supplies photomasks to panel makers and can be a bellwether of conditions in sectors of the display industry. Gen 10.5 panels are optimized for 65- and 75-inch big-screen TVs. “There was virtually no demand across the industry” for Gen 10.5 masks, but “we’re expecting market demand to pick back up” in the current fiscal Q3 ending early August, said Kirlin. Photronics shipped more photomasks for Gen 10.5 displays this quarter than it did in all of fiscal Q2, he said. Demand for photomasks comes from new panel capacity, but also from new products on existing capacity, said Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O'Brien. "If there is no demand for new masks, then there is no new product development happening on Gen 10.5. That would be consistent with the current LCD shortage -- fabs want to run everything they can on existing products."