Global shipments of advanced TVs are expected to rise at a 22% compound annual growth rate, reaching 32.5 million sets in 2025, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. DSCC defines advanced TVs as including all OLED and 8K sets, plus LCD TVs with upmarket features like quantum dot enhancement films. Stay-at-home orders drove a “massive” 71% increase in Q3 advanced TV shipments, and they're expected in Q4 to rise by a “more modest” 22% from the 2019 quarter to 4.7 million units. DSCC expects the biggest year-over-year Q4 gains in the smallest and largest screen sizes. Advanced LCD TVs smaller than 49 inches will rise 97%, it said. It expects that OLED TV growth will outpace that of advanced LCD TVs in Q4. DSCC projects that about 4.7 million 8K TVs will be shipped globally in 2025, about half of them in the 65-inch class. Fewer than 400,000 8K sets will have shipped this year, it said.

Though the display business for Applied Materials is at “a cyclical low as we sit today,” senior management is planning for a return “to a more attractive point in the investment cycle in 2022,” Chief Financial Officer Dan Durn told a Wells Fargo investor conference Wednesday. The company supplies OLED vapor-deposition equipment and services to Chinese panel makers and can be a bellwether of display industry health. “We're seeing green shoots and we think the bias is towards the upside as those green shoots take hold,” said Durn. It's “prudent to set expectations” that the display improvement “materializes” in two years, “but if it happens faster, we'll certainly benefit from that,” he said. Display will “very quickly” become “a good adder to growth, revenue, earnings, cash flow and I just think it's an underappreciated part of the portfolio,” he said.

MiniLED backlights are poised to begin rapid adoption in 2021, rising to 8.9 million units from only 50,000 this year, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. It predicts the technology will gain “significant momentum” next year as Samsung and Chinese brands launch LCD TVs with miniLED backlights. DSCC estimates Samsung will target sales of 2 million such sets. “Growth will not be restricted to the TV segment,” it said. Apple’s suppliers have started producing miniLED backlights for the new iPad Pro, scheduled for 2021 release, it said. MiniLED backlights began appearing in professional monitors and premium TVs last year, said DSCC. They're “ideally sized for integration into LCD backlights with local dimming capability,” giving their panels higher contrast ratios and better efficiency without sacrificing brightness, it said. MiniLED backlights can also reduce panel thickness compared with displays “using conventional full array local dimming,” it said.

Samsung Display has “big plans and big investments” for hybrid quantum dot-OLED TV panels, Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien told the virtual SMPTE 2020 conference Wednesday. “Those investments are already well underway as Samsung exits the LCD business and expects to start QD-OLED production in 2021.” QD-OLED is expected to have “some of the same advantages” as LG Display’s white OLED, plus the additional benefits of increased brightness and wide color gamut, said O’Brien. But QD-OLED is “very complex” with many manufacturing “challenges,” he said. DSCC expects Samsung will have low yields at the start, “and will begin to introduce the product at prices even higher than white OLED,” he said. Samsung didn’t respond to questions. Samsung said last month it was pondering a delay in its year-end exit from the LCD panel business due to the sharp spike in stay-at-home consumer demand for premium LCD TVs (see 2010290025).

Flat-panel display demand is on pace to reach 220 million square meters (2.4 billion square feet) this year, more than 4% higher than in 2019, reported Omdia Monday. Q3 demand jumped more than 12% from Q2, it said. But there’s a looming supply crunch because large-area production capacity will grow only 2% in 2020, it said. Samsung is shutting its South Korean LCD panel fabs by year-end and is reducing its Gen 7 and Gen 8.5 TV capacity by about 19 million square meters (205 million square feet), “the equivalent of about 31 million 43-inch TVs,” it said. Samsung is weighing whether to postpone exiting the LCD panel business due to the sharp spike in stay-at-home consumer demand for premium LCD TVs, it told investors last week (see 2010290025). Disruptions in the supply chain also risk constricting panel availability, said Omdia. Multiple new Chinese fabs “have suffered delayed ramp-ups as travel restrictions on foreign engineers prevented the set-up of key equipment” during 2020's first half, it said. Q4 is “further being impacted by tight supply of Gen 10.5 glass substrates for some panel makers,” it said.

There’s a paradox looming in the 2021 LCD TV supply chain between set makers planning to increase their panel buys and panel makers cutting TV display capacity to reconfigure production lines for in-demand laptop screens, reported Omdia Monday. Top global TV brands are expected to increase their panel buys by 9% over 2020 if they're able to secure supply, it said. “Panel makers are prioritizing their panel supply to their strategic or preferred top tier TV makers who can sell TVs with advanced features at a higher premium, rather than to the low-tier TV makers whose TVs are priced at low value in the market,” said Omdia.

How the export restrictions on Huawei changed mobile OLED panel pricing will be among the topics at a Dec. 2 display market outlook virtual conference, said Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. “As the year draws to a close, we thought it would be valuable for our customers to get the latest display market forecasts as you update and finalize your 2021 business plans,” said the organizers. Registered attendees will also be able to submit up to three “private questions” by email, they said. Registration is $299, rising to $349 after Nov. 16.

LG Electronics and Samsung Display applied two weeks apart to trademark QNED for future generations of quantum nano emitting diode display technology, Patent and Trademark Office records show. LG’s application was Sept. 8, Samsung’s Sept. 25, both listing a wide diversity of possible QNED uses for TVs, smartphones, tablets and digital signage. A QNED display uses gallium nitride-based blue-light-emitting nanorod LEDs in place of OLED as the blue light source, emailed Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien Thursday. QNED, compared with OLED, promises higher efficiencies, improved brightness, longer lifetimes and the elimination of “burn-in issues,” said O’Brien. QNED is on Samsung’s product road map to follow the 2021 commercialization of quantum dot OLED displays, David Hsieh, Omdia senior director-displays, told the Display Week 2020 virtual conference in August. He described QNED as a hybrid between microLED displays and quantum dots. Nanosys Director-Marketing Jeff Yurek thinks Hsieh's description was "on point," he emailed Thursday. "You would still use QDs as a color conversion layer in a QNED stack." QNED is "a really cool idea and could bring some real benefits but I think it will be a while before we see QNED in products," he said.

Samsung highlighted its Terrace outdoor TV, its first Premiere laser-based ultra-short-throw projector, the rotating Sero and 8K TVs in a virtual CEDIA Expo media briefing Tuesday. The models, introduced at CES (see 2001060010), are targeted to residential and commercial markets, along with the multiscreen The Wall, a modular microLED design shown as a 292-inch TV wall in Las Vegas. Samsung also added 32- and 75-inch screen sizes for the Frame portfolio that's designed to showcase digital art. The 4K Premiere with Filmmaker Mode (see 2009020037) allows 130-inch projections in smaller spaces with smart TV functionality at an affordable price, said Jim Mayo, Samsung senior director-custom install (CI) channel/strategy. Mayo also promoted the Q-Symphony, which pairs audio from Q series sound bars with QLED TV speakers. The combination, developed by Samsung’s California audio lab, delivers a fuller, more immersive sound experience than a standard sound bar, he said. Mayo reviewed Samsung’s invitation-only CI Platinum program offered to the company’s top dealers and installers. Launched in February, it offers dealers more attractive margins, inclusion in regional distribution in hitting targets, individual volume incentive rebate programs, priority allocation, demonstration program enhancements and an accommodation program, he said. A charity component matches member donations to select organizations. The Platinum program has more than 500 dealers. Samsung has physical design and executive briefing centers for CI dealer and integrator use, said Mark Quiroz, vice president-marketing, display. Samsung has sites in Dallas; Washington; Irvine, California; and Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, where dealers can see products in different applications.

Sony began shipping two native 4K home theater projectors using its Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) panels Tuesday through Amazon, Best Buy and other authorized dealers. A third, flagship, laser projector is slated for winter, it said. The lamp-based VPL-VW715ES ($9,998) and laser-driven VPL-VW915ES ($19,995) replace the VPL-VW695ES and VPL-VW885ES, offering HDR via X1 processing based on processing engines used in Sony's top-tier TVs, said the company. The flagship 4K SXRD VPL-GTZ380 laser projector is positioned for a home theater, living room, corporate or simulation environments. Its 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut is achieved without sacrificing brightness, rated at 10,000 lumens, from a three-channel laser light source.