Samsung is moving outside, following the recent trend in upscale home electronics toward outdoor entertainment spaces. The company announced Thursday The Terrace, a 4K QLED TV and accompanying sound bar in 55-, 65- and 75-inch screen sizes. The TVs have an IP55 rating and are said to be water- and dust-resistant. Brightness level is 2,000 nits for viewing in broad daylight; a high motion rate can handle fast-moving content, it said. An anti-reflective coating is designed to minimize glare; adaptive picture technology optimizes content to the surroundings, said the company. The Tizen-based smart TVs include the Samsung TV Plus ad-supported video service and support Bixby, Amazon Alexa and, soon, Google Assistant voice control.

TV tech is going horticultural. Quantum dots supplier Nanosys is teaming with materials company UbiQD to develop and manufacture greenhouse films that use fluorescent QDs to help “plants get more from the sun,” said the companies Wednesday. The films convert underused portions of sunlight to “more photosynthetically efficient” orange light that plants crave, they said. The greenhouse films market uses 20 times more QD films in terms of area than the display industry and continues to grow by double digit percentages annually, said Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove. Greenhouses are a “massive opportunity” for QD technology, he said.

Q1 revenue at eMagin increased 10%, exceeding expectations, due to “the additional contract work of designing a display for a tier one customer in the consumer space,” said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Thursday investor call. The company manufactures OLED microdisplays for augmented and virtual reality headsets for consumer and military applications. It’s "on track" with its new direct-patterning OLED technology to achieve 10,000 nits of peak brightness by Q4 and expects to reach 28,000 nits “for production of full-color displays by 2023,” said Sculley. “This is five to 10 times higher than any competitor.” The new consumer contract is “going to be a significant project for us” because it involves eMagin’s new “backplane design,” he said. It showed a prototype at last year’s Display Week conference, “and this one company saw it and said, ‘Wow, you guys can do this,’ and that's why we kicked off the design,” he said. “More companies talking to us is a very good thing.” It “generates interest” when eMagin showcases new prototypes, he said. “The consumer world thinks that our technology is the way to go.” If COVID-19-induced telework persists post-pandemic, that could speed adoption of VR headsets, he said. “If I'm sitting at the office and I'm a stock trader or something like that, I may have six screens in front of me.” There’s “talk” out there of replacing the six screens with a single VR headset, he said. “If we continue to work at home, that would make it very convenient instead of requiring me to have six screens on my dining room table.”

Q1 TV imports to the U.S. from all countries declined 13.8% from a year earlier to 7.93 million sets, said Census Bureau data accessed Saturday through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb tool. March TV imports of 2.2 million were 17.6% fewer sets than in February and 10.7% below the March 2019 volume. The unmistakable skew in Q1 was toward larger-screen TVs. Q1 imports of the largest sets, classified under the 8528.72.64.60 tariff code for screen sizes exceeding 44.5 inches, declined 2.8% in Q1 to 4.65 million, compared with the 13.8% decline for all sets imported. Q1 imports of the largest-screen 8528.72.64.60 goods were 58.6% of all TV imports, compared with only 52% in the same 2019 quarter. Mexico increasingly became the country of origin for U.S. TV imports, especially in the largest screen sizes. U.S. importers sourced 67.4% of their TVs in Mexico in Q1, compared with 37.7% in the 2019 quarter, when Section 301 tariffs weren’t yet in play on Chinese TV imports. Mexico was the source of 77.8% of the largest-screen-size TV imports compared with 57.7% in the 2019 quarter.

Quantum dot-based display panel shipments are expected to rise at a 40% compound annual growth rate, reaching 31 million units by 2025, said Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. “With premium displays being driven by wide color gamut and high dynamic range requirements, this segment represents a growing opportunity for QD-based displays,” it said. The costs of QD enhancement film (QDEF) “have dropped rapidly over the last few years,” further seeding more widespread adoption, said DSCC. “Improved manufacturing techniques, economies of scale and increased competition from QD and barrier film suppliers have pushed the prices lower.” It forecasts QDEF average selling prices will approach $11.40 per square meter in 2025, down from nearly $30 in 2018, it said.

The global market for foldable AMOLED display panel shipments will grow to 3.9 million units, from 700,000 last year, said Omdia, formerly IHS Markit, Tuesday. Shipments are forecast to reach 73.1 million in 2025. The designs allow small devices to support very large displays, said analyst Jerry Kang. Shipments in 2019 were limited due to high pricing and low reliability, but smartphone OEMs are increasing use of AMOLED displays. The next-generation displays will be 1.3% of the 311.9-million flexible OLED business this year, leaving “plenty of growth opportunity for foldable displays in the coming years as they resolve their manufacturing issues," Kang said.

Revenue from shipments of “advanced” TVs will rise at a 9% compound annual growth rate, reaching $26 billion globally in 2025, said Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. It defines an advanced TV as any set with a “premium” display technology feature, including OLED, 8K and all quantum-dot models, it said. Q1 shipments of those models jumped 42% from the same quarter a year earlier, to 2.4 million units, with the largest screen sizes having the biggest gains, it said. Advanced LCD TVs larger than 75 inches were up 93%, it said.

Q1 sales of TCL-branded TVs outside China declined 23.8% year on year to 3.11 million sets, including a 52.1% decrease in North America, reported the brand’s Hong Kong holding company Friday. It blamed the decline on a difficult comparison with Q1 2019, when sales increased 112%. Global sales of TCL-brand TVs reached 4.27 million sets, 88.1% of them smart TVs, 50.7% of them 4K models, said TCL.

The market for foldable displays “underperformed” in 2019, but there’s “a tremendous amount of activity and progress,” said Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young Monday. “We see 26 new foldable devices in development and expected to launch in the next 24 months.” Developers advanced toward “robustness and scratch resistance," he said. That may reduce “consumer concerns” and will “accelerate demand,” he said. DSSC forecast foldable-phone revenue rising at a 110% compound annual growth rate, to $70 billion in 2025. Foldable-display panel shipments will rise at a 132% CAGR to 77 million units, and smartphones will be the vast majority of foldable applications, it said.

Corning will decommission display glass manufacturing assets at its Shizuoka (SK) LCD glass substrate facility by year-end, it said Wednesday. The company will idle the plant’s glass production lines later in the year, it said. Actions were driven by “the changing display landscape, including flat to decreasing demand from Japan panel makers, and growing demand from panel makers in other regions, requiring our resources,” said Thomas Lynch, general manager, Corning Display Technologies. Parts of the facility will remain in use for the company’s logistics and manufacturing organizations and the company’s technology center. Corning will offer SK employees job transfer opportunities within the business or voluntary separation packages.