Smart TVs are expected to capture a 70 percent share of global set shipments this year, up from 64 percent in 2017 and 45 percent in 2015, said IHS Markit Tuesday. Overall TV shipments are recovering in 2018, due to increased price erosion from declining LCD TV panel prices, with shipments rising 3.5 percent to 223 million units, it said. “Global growth is expected in all regions this year, and positive annual unit growth is forecast to continue during the buildup toward the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo,” said Paul Gagnon, research and analysis executive director. “The rise of streaming video availability worldwide,” especially for special events like the World Cup, has "encouraged strong growth in smart TV sales in recent years,” it said. The increasing penetration of Amazon Alexa, Google Home and other voice-control platforms “will further increase demand for smart TVs in 2018 and beyond,” said IHS. “Streaming video is also the most common way for consumers to view 4K content while broadcast and pay TV options are limited, further fueling smart TV adoption.”

Expect smartphone displays to “move rapidly” toward 18:9 and wider aspect ratios in 2018's second half, said IHS Markit Monday. Smartphones using 18:9 and wider aspect screens are forecast to increase to 66 percent of total smartphone shipments in Q3, up from their 10 percent share in the same period last year, said IHS. After Samsung’s release last year of a Galaxy phone with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio and Apple’s debut of an iPhone with a 19.5:9 screen, “most smartphone brands have similarly followed suit by applying wider aspect screens to their 2018 lineup to keep up with product differentiation,” it said. “Improvements in display technologies have hastened the expansion of the wider screen adoption in smartphones.” Initially, flexible OLED had the advantage for fashioning 18:9 or wider screens, but “rapidly improving designs” have allowed LCD to close the gap, it said.

Despite concerns about weakening consumer TV demand and falling profit margins, major South Korean and Chinese TV makers “are expected to stock up” on display panels in Q3 to “prepare for the seasonal year-end shopping spree by consumers,” said IHS Markit Tuesday. South Korean TV brands’ panel purchasing volume is forecast to increase to 20.4 million units in Q3, up 18 percent from the previous quarter and 3 percent higher from a year ago, said IHS. “This is indicative of a recovery in panel purchasing from a decline of 3 percent in the second quarter on a quarter-to-quarter basis and down 1 percent year-over-year.” China’s top five TV brands, which bought more panels than expected in Q1, again increased their panel purchasing in Q2 by 0.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 18 percent year-on-year to 19.8 million units, it said. “In the third quarter, these Chinese brands are likely to keep their purchasing volumes at a similar growth level of 1 percent quarter-on-quarter or 17 percent year-on-year.” Though the outlook for panel demand looks positive, most TV brands “are still anxious about uncertainty in market demand in the second half of the year while carrying high inventories,” said IHS. TV demand in Europe “has particularly been weaker than expected,” it said. Eroding profit margins from “fast-falling” TV average selling prices is another worry, the researcher said: “As TV makers, particularly the Chinese brands, keep high inventories on hand, they end up cutting TV prices to manage their inventories, leading to lower margins -- even for larger and premium TVs. If their inventory clearance strategies and upcoming seasonal demand fall short of the expectations, these TV brands will eventually have to cut panel purchasing later in the year to lower the inventory burden.”

LG Display’s OLED joint manufacturing venture with Guangzhou Economic and Technological Development District, which has been approved by the Chinese government, will be able to produce 90,000 input sheets monthly at full capacity, said LG Tuesday. LG will control 70 percent and Guangzhou 30 percent with total investment in the 8.5-generation plant given as $4.5 billion. The facility will produce large-size OLED panels for TVs, starting at 60,000 input sheets monthly, LG said, with production slated to begin in the second half of 2019. Combined with its 70,000 input sheets a month from its plants in Paju, South Korea, LG Display's total large-size OLED panel production will reach 130,000 sheets each month by next year's second half, it said, enabling shipments of up to 10 million 55-inch OLED TV panels annually.

The “aggressive investment” in Gen 10.5 LCD fabs is helping to widen the “accumulated gap” between LCD TV set and panel shipments, said IHS Markit Thursday. Despite better than expected Q1 demand for LCD sets and panels, “market players would be well advised to adopt a more conservative outlook in demand growth for the coming quarters,” said IHS. Panel makers managed to sell more panels in Q1 than originally forecast “because panel prices declined much faster than expected,” it said. Global Q1 panel shipments increased 13.3 percent from a year earlier, while TV set shipments rose 7.9 percent, the firm said. “LCD TV panel shipments are expected to grow faster than the LCD TV set shipments, expanding the accumulated gap between the two even further.” With LCD fab capacity expected to increase more than demand as new Gen 10.5 plants come online, “panel suppliers will likely push to sell panels at lower prices while set makers are to hesitate buying panels expecting the price to drop even further,” the researcher said.

IHS Markit expects the first foldable active-matrix OLED smartphone displays to “hit the market this year,” said Jerry Kang, senior principal analyst, in a research note Tuesday. Foldable AMOLED displays will be only a miniscule portion of flexible AMOLED shipments in 2018, rising to 6 percent in 2021, said Kang. Most suppliers of flexible OLED panels “are planning to put foldable AMOLED into mass production in a few years,” he said. Samsung Display, which demonstrated single- and dual-foldable AMOLED displays for the past five years, is expected to mass-produce its first foldable AMOLED displays for Samsung smartphones in 2018, he said. Another panel supplier, BOE, has developed a prototype of a 7.6-inch foldable AMOLED display with a 2048x1536 resolution and a 5-millimeter bending radius, “which reliably bends 100,000 times without breaking,” he said. “BOE is looking to supply this foldable AMOLED display to Huawei this year.” Smartphone brands plan to use the new foldable displays mainly in larger-sized premium devices, said Kang. Their “transformable” displays will “combine the usability of smartphones and tablets,” he said. The first smartphones with foldable displays will likely command steep prices that “could be a barrier to adoption, however,” he said.

Nanosys will use its latest $15 million round of equity funding (see 1805310053) to speed development of the next generation of quantum dot technologies “on our roadmap,” Jeff Yurek, director-marketing and investor relations, emailed us Thursday. At Display Week, Nanosys showcased a “technology road map” that foretold of coming advances in QD color conversion (QDCC) patterning and QD electro-luminescent (QDEL) materials, said Yurek. With QDCC, “new levels of color volume performance and manufacturing throughput are possible for LCD, OLED and microLED displays, said the road map. QDEL is the material of the future for self-emissive displays, and will “finally make low-cost, ultra-thin and flexible” display form factors “a reality,” it said. The latest funding round is the third such private equity offering Nanosys has made in the past 38 months, SEC records show. Nanosys raised just above $10 million in a March 2015 offering, and slightly more than $15 million in a September round. As a private company, “historically, we have not disclosed strategic investors in these types of filings so I cannot give you a name here,” said Yurek. “This is a new, strategic investor.” Of the $5 million in equity that remains to be sold in the latest round, “we are now closing the first roughly $2M of that tranche and in active discussions with a number of others on the remaining balance,” he said. “There’s an additional ~$3 million potentially available for investment in this round.”

Forcing analog-only cable systems to comply with the audible crawl rule would have forced financially marginal systems out of business, American Cable Association President Matt Polka said Tuesday, applauding Friday's FCC Media Bureau order granting an ACA-sought waiver for such analog systems. The bureau said analog-only systems that eventually transition to digital technology will have the ability to pass through a secondary audio stream with audible emergency information and will be obliged to do so by the audible crawl rule, and those that remain analog-only will have longer business lives due to the permanent waiver. The order extended for five more years the existing waiver given to TV broadcasters requiring they aurally describe visual but non-textual emergency information; that waiver had been sought by NAB, the American Foundation for the Blind and American Council of the Blind (see 1803230067). The bureau said the waiver, now running to May 26, 2023, recognizes that the broadcast industry doesn't have a good option for ensuring good descriptions of images and dynamic video conveying visual emergency information over existing broadcast systems.

TV display shipments in Q1 beat expectations, rising 12 percent in units and 11 percent in area vs. the year-ago quarter, said a Tuesday IHS Markit report. The 55-inch and larger segment jumped 20 percent year on year in Q1, and 4K display shipments increased 19 percent to 24.6 million for the period, said the report. OLED TV display shipments soared 110 percent to roughly 600,000 units, it said. Declines in Q1 vs. Q4 2017, at 4 percent for unit shipments and 7 percent in area, weren't as deep as expected, but shipments dropped 10 percent in value from quarter to quarter due to “continued erosion" in panel pricing, which began in mid- 2017, said analyst Robin Wu. “The major concerns to the panel makers is how to achieve a turnaround in panel prices and when,” Wu said, saying the trend to larger sizes and higher-end products could help. Overall, demand for display panels above 9 inches was better than forecast in Q1, but still weak, said IHS. With Q1 a typically slow quarter as brands try to clear out inventory before bringing out new models, top-tier brands were expected to stop focusing on volume growth, which lowered market expectations for panel demand, said the researcher. But shipments of displays larger than 9 inches grew by 6 percent in units and 10 percent in area, it said, led by LG Display with 22 percent share of area shipments and Samsung Display at 17 percent. In unit shipments, BOE led the market with 22 percent share, it said.

Corning staged a launch ceremony for the Gen 10.5 LCD glass fab collocated with the plant of panel maker BOE Technology Group in Hefei, China, said the company Wednesday. Corning began shipping substrates produced at the fab about two months ago (see 1804240056). The official opening of the facility makes Corning the world’s first manufacturer of Gen 10.5 LCD mother glass, optimized for 65- and 75-inch TVs, it said. The fab is “the next milestone in the display business, enabling us to make the world’s largest glass substrate to support the growing global demand for large size TVs,” it said.