Merck spent 30 million euros (about $33.6 million) to open an OLED materials production plant in Darmstadt, Germany, because it sees OLED as having “the potential to become an important technology of the future for displays and lighting,” the company said in a Sunday blog post. The plant opened Wednesday. Merck is working on materials for “ultra-thin, printable OLED displays that are flexible and rollable -- for example, for newly shaped smartphones,” the company said.

LG Electronics bowed three 21:9 UltraWide monitors for the U.S, led by the 38-inch curved professional model 38UC99 designed for visual content creation, data crunching and multitasking ($1,499, September). The 3840 x 1600 IPS (in-plane switching) monitor covers 99 percent of the sRGB color space, has built-in 10-watt Bluetooth speakers and is the first in the UltraWide series with a USB Type-C port, said LG in a news release. The curved 144Hz IPS model 34UC79G gaming monitor ($699, October) has a fast refresh rate with one millisecond motion blur reduction. It offers seamless image transitions without afterimages, boosted contrast to allow viewers to detect dark objects hidden in hard-to-see areas and a synchronization feature to reduce input lag, said LG. A crosshair option adds a fixed target to the center of the 34-inch screen to increase accuracy during first-person shooter games and a mouse line hook to prevent drag resistance caused by the mouse cable, it said. The 34-inch 34UM79M ($599, November) has an IPS display, a Cinema Screen design, thin bezel and Google Cast. A split-screen function offers 14 preset layouts that can be resized to user preference for multiple viewing of programs and content, it said.

Samsung announced two series of curved quantum dot gaming monitors, it said in a Monday news release. The CFG70 (24- and 27-inch at $399 and $499) and the 34-inch CF791 ($999) include interactive LED lighting, a user dashboard, and AMD FreeSync technology that’s said to reduce input latency, stutter and lag. The monitors express color across a 125 percent sRGB spectrum, which the company said provides deeper blacks and sharper color distinctions than conventional monitors for an enhanced game experience. Like Samsung SUHD TVs, the monitors are cadmium-free, said the company.

The global market for encapsulation materials used in active-matrix OLED displays is expected to rise 76 percent this year from last, to $111 million, said Richard Son, IHS Markit principal analyst-display chemical materials, in a Monday research note. Son sees a bright long-term outlook for the encapsulation materials market as AMOLED displays are expected to double their share of the overall display market to 22 percent in 2020, from 11 percent this year he said. AMOLED encapsulation surface area is expected to rise 62 percent year over year to reach 4 million square meters in 2016, he said: “Double-digit growth will continue, reaching 13 million square meters in 2020.” Of the three types of encapsulation materials -- glass, metal and thin-film -- used in AMOLED displays, Son sees glass getting 56 percent of the total encapsulation market this year, he said. “However, with rising demand for AMOLED TVs requiring much larger display surface area than smaller smartphone and wearable devices, metal encapsulation is expected to overtake glass encapsulation, to reach 53 percent of the market in 2017,” he said.

Production-equipment supplier Applied Materials sees OLED displays as a “big driver” of future company growth, CEO Gary Dickerson said on a Thursday earnings call. In OLED, the company sees its “available market opportunity” as more than three times larger than for “traditional LCD,” Dickerson said. “OLED is the key for high-resolution, low-powered screens with faster refresh rates,” he said. “We expect it to become the standard for virtual-reality-capable phones and headsets.” Applied Materials is in “the initial phase of OLED investments, and this opportunity is layered on top of solid demand for our leadership in display products for TV and mobile,” he said. Dickerson thinks “we’re still in the early innings” of the smartphone’s transition to OLED displays, he said in Q&A. As evidence that OLED developments are still in the early stages, the orders that Applied Materials has been “booking” are for products that won’t “ship through” until perhaps early 2018, Chief Financial Officer Bob Halliday said on the call. “So this OLED transition is going to go on for a while and we have enriched the opportunity for us by developing new products there.”

The oversupplied display market of Q1 has corrected itself and is now trending toward “surprising tightness” in second-half 2016, said an IHS report Tuesday. Because of seasonally weak demand and the ramping of new capacity in China, flat-panel display (FPD) supply outpaced demand by 20 percent in Q1, the largest glut since early 2012, IHS said. After “rapidly” correcting itself in Q2, supply is expected to tighten further next year, it said. Falling panel prices late last year and early this year drove consumers to buy larger TVs, while notebook and monitor demand began to stabilize, said IHS. Capacity growth is restricted as manufacturers adopted “new and more complicated processes” in some factories and closed others that are less productive, it said. “South Korean panel makers are being particularly aggressive in shutting down older LCD fabs, including Gen 5 and even Gen 7 facilities,” said analyst Charles Annis. A South Korean seventh-generation facility scheduled to be taken off-line later this year accounts for nearly 4 percent of capacity designated for large-area production and will be the largest factory shutdown in the history of FPD manufacturing, Annis said. Demand for large-area FPD applications is expected to grow 5-6 percent per year through 2018 while capacity is expected to increase by only 1 percent next year and 5 percent in 2018, said IHS. By the second half of 2018, additional capacity brought on by Chinese producers -- including the first gen 10.5 factory -- is expected to nudge FPD supply back toward “looseness,” said Annis. “Historically, the FPD market has corrected itself by reducing factory utilization and delaying capacity expansion plans.” But the rise of Chinese FPD manufacturing has altered the pattern, pushing manufacturers in other regions “to rationalize their current production assets at unprecedented and unexpected rates,” he said.

LG Display thinks it’s entering a “virtuous cycle” in OLED panels for large-screen TVs, said Chief Financial Officer Don Kim on an earnings call last week. In Q2, LG Display had improvements in yield, productivity and increasing shipments in large-size OLED panels, Kim said, without offering specifics. “With higher consumer awareness for OLED TV and based on the visibility and acceptance we have gained,” LG Display also is taking feelers from an expanding base of possible new OLED TV customers, he said. “We are really in the stage of very specific and detailed collaboration talks at this point,” Kim said. “Now, please understand I won’t be able to cite a specific number of customers, but they are global customers from Japan, China and Europe. We are currently in specific collaborations with these companies.” Kim also predicted LG Display will show “a very steady improvement in profitability” in large-screen OLED panels the rest of the year. But LG Display’s large-screen OLED business is still operating at a loss, and Kim wouldn’t be pinned down in Q&A when it might begin showing a profit. “We will focus on building on the economy of scale” in large-screen OLED panel production, he said. That will “work as an advantage and merit on our side,” he said. “So starting next year in full swing, we will be expanding the volume and we plan to, thereby, enhance the profitability. Your question specifically was about when we will turn a profit, in terms of the operating income, the operating profit. It’s very cautious for me to give you a specific number, but what is very clear is that there will be profitability improvement.” At LG Display, though large-screen OLED panels are only 2 percent of the units in the “TV segment,” they soon will generate 10 percent of the revenue, he said.

Corning is projecting that a “weaker handheld and IT end-market environment” will persist through second half 2016, said Chief Financial Officer Tony Tripeny on Wednesday’s earnings call. As a result, Corning expects full-year sales in specialty materials to be “consistent with or down slightly from 2015, driven primarily by our performance in Q1.” Specialty materials volume slipped 2 percent in Q2 to $266 million as Gorilla Glass revenue for smartphones, tablets and laptop PCs “did not meet expectations," said Tripeny. “Tablets are bigger, so that has an outsized impact,” he said, saying the company scaled back the outlook for both smartphones and tablets. Profit in specialty materials grew 9 percent year over year on sales of Gorilla Glass 4, he said. Although IT and handheld device demand has slowed, “It has a small impact on the overall display market,” said Tripeny, saying “what really matters is what happens in TVs." Corning forecasts TV unit sales will increase 2 percent year over year and screen sizes will grow by 1.5 inches. In Q2, Corning's display segment grew 2 percent to $801 million, said a 10-Q SEC filing. CEO Wendell Weeks said market reports indicate 2016 TV unit growth may be softer than was expected at the beginning of the year, but screen size may be a bit larger than previously thought.

OLED will overtake LCD as the leading display technology for mobile devices by 2020 said an IHS Markit report Monday. AMOLED displays with a low-temperature polysilicon backplane will be 36 percent of all smartphone display shipments in 2020, said IHS. “While OLED is currently more difficult to manufacture, uses more complicated materials and chemical processes, and requires a keen focus on yield-rate management, it is an increasingly attractive technology for smartphone brands,” said David Hsieh, IHS analyst. OLED displays are thinner and lighter than LCD displays and they deliver better color performance, including the potential for flexible design form factors that can lead to "more innovative design,” Hsieh said. Samsung is using OLED displays in its smartphones and demand is increasing from Chinese smartphone brands Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Meizu, among others, said Hsieh. Apple is expected to use OLED displays in upcoming iPhone models because flexible displays from thinner and lighter plastic “have drawn Apple’s attention,” Hsieh said. Apple’s adoption of OLED displays will be a “milestone” for the industry, he said. Samsung Display, LG Display, Sharp, JDI, Boe, Tianma Microelectronics, Gvo, Truly Semiconductors and China Star Optoelectronics also are starting to ramp AMOLED manufacturing capacities and devote more resources to technology development, he said. Many of the fabs under construction, especially in China, have had to add OLED evaporation and encapsulation tools because OLED penetration has been “more rapid than previously expected,” he said. Global AMOLED manufacturing capacity will grow from 5 million square meters in 2014 to 30 million square meters in 2020, IHS forecast.

Sears, which earlier this month launched its first private-labeled TVs under the Kenmore brand (see 1607200069), appeared a couple of generations behind the times Thursday in a marketing email to customers. The TV-centric email encouraged customers to visit its “TV Knowledge Center” to learn about TV technologies trending several years ago. The opening page of the email pitch had buttons for shoppers to click to be directed to the Sears e-commerce site for more information: “Learn about plasma vs LCD Vs LED TV technologies” and “Do you want active or passive 3-D?” A search for plasma TVs on the Sears website produced only accessories such as plasma TV stands and wall mounts, but no TVs. Holdouts Panasonic and Samsung stopped selling plasma TVs in 2014. The Sears website showed several new 3D TVs from LG and Samsung, along with refurbished models.