Inkjet-printed OLED display technology is poised for “mass production” starting next year, with global capacity expected to rise to 1.3 million substrates in 2024, from 105,000 in 2020, said IHS Markit Thursday. Inkjet printing “has attracted the attention of panel makers due to its strong potential to reduce the cost of OLED production,” said IHS. OLED market penetration “remains limited because of its expensive production costs,” it said. Inkjet printing “has the potential to dramatically reduce manufacturing expenses, making OLEDs more cost-competitive with LCDs.” For 65-inch 4K OLED TVs produced on a Gen-10 line, inkjet production is expected to be as much as 15 to 25 percent cheaper than the current white OLED techniques that LG Display espouses, said IHS.

Corning in its Investor Day presentation Friday didn’t name the LCD panel suppliers it’s partnering with at its two new Gen 10.5 glass factories in China (see 1906140027), but “we know” that Foxconn will be the partner at the Guangzhou glass plant and BOE will occupy that role at the Wuhan glass factory, blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien Tuesday. Corning already partners with BOE at a Gen 10.5 plant in Hefei, China, that the glassmaker said last week is nearing capacity after starting production about a year ago. Corning customarily signs 10-year supply agreements with panel partners as a means of “de-risking” its glass-factory investments in China, said Jim Clappin, Corning Glass Technologies executive vice president, at Friday’s conference. “In recent years, Corning has walked a fine line in describing the technology battle between LCD and OLED,” said O’Brien. “Corning clearly has a preference for LCD,” but it also has been “cautious about downplaying” OLED, he said: “In his presentation, Clappin threw away that caution and put Corning’s position squarely on LCD.”

“Dramatic cost reductions” likely will “transform” microLED displays into a “mass-market product” by around the middle of the next decade, reported IHS Markit Tuesday. Though fewer than 1,000 microLED display units are expected to ship globally this year or next, IHS sees the business reaching 15.5 million units worldwide in 2026 “as steep declines in manufacturing costs make the emerging technology suitable” for mainstream consumers. The researcher sees the technology “gradually” gaining “acceptance” in smartwatches, TVs, augmented-reality systems and smartphones. The manufacturing cost of a 1.5-inch microLED display for use in smartwatches is expected to fall to a tenth of its current cost by 2026. The production cost of a 75-inch microLED display for TVs will drop to a fifth of its current expense within seven years, it said: “Despite the growth in acceptance, microLED shipments in 2026 will still amount to just 0.4 percent of the global flat-panel display market. However, with shipments of nearly 16 million units that year, microLED will have entered mass-market territory, setting the stage for much wider acceptance during the following years.”

There’s keen “interest” in the display industry in the future “architecture” for large-screen hybrid quantum-dot OLED TVs (see 1901210004), “no one more so than me personally,” Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove told the 8K Display Summit Tuesday. Hartlove sidestepped questions about whether he considers QD-OLED to be true OLED, compared with white OLED, which he disparaged at the 2016 Display Week conference as "horrible" technology that shortchanges the consumer (see 1605240002). “I’ll leave the whole marketing terminology battle to someone else who actually markets and sells the products,” said Hartlove Tuesday. “To me, the most important thing for the consumer is color volume,” he said. “Just by saying you have bright luminance without color behind it is a little disingenuous in terms of being able to faithfully reproduce things that we see in nature,” he said. “Fire is very bright, but it’s also not white. It’s red, orange and yellow. I think it’s important to produce lots of photons for when you need those bright highlights, but also colored photons.” There are technologies “that do that well,” including microLEDs and “eventually QD-OLEDs,” he said.

LG Business Solutions launched its Transparent OLED digital signage display at Infocomm (see 1906100020) Tuesday, with availability slated for this month. The “razor-thin” see-through display shows video on a screen while objects and images behind the video augment what’s shown on the display. In its Infocomm booth, LG set up six transparent displays to make up a video wall in a 2 x 3 landscape mode configuration along with 2 x 2 portrait mode. Commercial applications include retail and hospitality, said the company. LG is also showing a touch version of the Transparent OLED in a 55-inch display that allows users to interact with content on a LG OLED video wall behind the transparent display. The LG displays, which require no separate light source, are “extremely thin” and lightweight at under 30 pounds and flexible enough to be bent at an installation site, said the company; it developed a “curvature calibrator” to train integrators how to get desired convex and concave curvatures to meet projects requirements.

Global spending on display-production equipment is expected to decline 29 percent this year to $15.2 billion on poor utilization of mobile OLED fabs utilization, said Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. A strong rebound is forecast for 2020, when spending increases 36 percent to $20.7 billion, DSCC said. That would be the third highest spending year on record. The researcher expects mobile OLED equipment spending to rise 461 percent next year to $8.2 billion, after declining 88 percent in 2019: “We also see TV spending falling only slightly to $12.5B, down just 9% after a record $13.7B in TV spending in 2019. Thus, TV fab spending will lead mobile spending with a 60%-40% advantage, while OLEDs will lead LCDs with a 56% to 44% advantage.” China’s share of equipment spending will remain “dominant” next year at 84 percent, though down 10 points from 2019, said DSCC.

Panel maker BOE Technology Group’s share of total industry production capacity is projected to rise to 17.7 percent this year, edging out LG Display for the first time, said IHS Markit Tuesday. BOE in 2019 will expand production capacity to more than 59 million square meters (635 million square feet) as it ramps up production at its Gen 10.5 LCD factory and its Gen 6 flexible AMOLED fab, said IHS. Corning is ramping Gen 10.5 glass production collocated with the BOE plant in Hefei, China (see 1805100002). “With plans to build even more LCD and AMOLED factories, BOE will solidify its leadership position in the coming years, with a 21 percent market share in 2023,” said IHS. “This represents rapid progress from just a 10 percent market share four years ago.” BOE’s growth story “epitomizes China’s rapid rise toward becoming the world’s top display manufacturing region,” said IHS. With five Gen 10.5 factories expected to be in full production by 2023, China will control 62 percent of worldwide capacity, “almost four times as much as any other region,” the researcher said.

TCL surged to the top of the North American TV market in Q1, as the brand’s unit shipments soared by 112 percent year over year, said IHS Markit Monday. TCL’s unit share jumped to 26.2 percent from 16 percent a year earlier, leapfrogging previous leader Samsung, whose unit share declined to 21.8 percent from 28 percent, said IHS. Vizio ranked third in Q1 with a 13.7 percent unit share, it said: Samsung’s premium positioning helped the brand maintain a “commanding lead” in revenue share for the quarter. Its 36.9 percent share was more than double that of any other company, said IHS.

LG Display's Q1 operating loss widened 35 percent from a year earlier to 132 billion South Korean won ($114.7 million), though revenue was up 4 percent to 5.88 trillion won ($5.1 billion), reported the panel maker Wednesday. “Despite the stabilization of larger size panel pricing” during the quarter, average pricing per square meter declined because of fewer shipments of small- and mid-sized panels, which have “relatively higher” average pricing, it said. TV panels were 36 percent of Q1 revenue, smartphones 25 percent, tablets and laptops 22 percent and desktop monitors 17 percent, it said. LG Display “will continue to step up its efforts to shift towards a more OLED-focused business structure,” despite the Q1 operating loss, it said. It’s the world’s only manufacturer capable of producing OLED panels for the TV, mobile and automotive sectors, it said. Its business in large-sized OLED TV panels reached breakeven in 2018's second half and was 20 percent of total TV panel revenue for the year. It’s expected to exceed 30 percent in 2019, it said. “We will continue our efforts this year to overcome the challenges that lie ahead as we shift towards a more OLED-focused business structure,” said Chief Financial Officer Dong-hee Suh. “We believe that we are on track to build a firm foundation for an OLED-focused business portfolio for future growth, and expect to show solid performance starting from next year.” LG Display knew “it wouldn’t be easy” when it “first set eyes” on basing a business on OLED technology, said CEO Sang-Beom Han in a 2015 IFA keynote (see 1509040026). The industry "pricing environment" in TV panels is the best it has been in more than a decade, said Corning executives on recent earnings calls (see 1807250008).

Flat-panel display demand increased 10.5 percent in 2018 to 221 million square meters (242 million square yards), the first double-digit growth in four years, reported IHS Markit Thursday. “Lower prices fed a sharp increase in panel demand for TVs, smartphones and desktop monitors,” it said. Demand for OLED TV panels increased by 65.6 percent to 3 million square meters (3.3 million square yards), and LCD TV panel demand rose 10.7 percent to 154 million square meters (168 million square yards), it said: “Growing popularity of 60-inch and larger TV panels contributed to the growth in overall TV panel area demand.”