AU Optronics shipped just over 10 million large-sized panels for LCD TVs, desktop monitors, notebook PCs and other applications in June, it said in a Thursday announcement. Its June shipments were up 5.2 percent from May, it said. June shipments of small- and medium-sized panels decreased 5 percent from May to just over 14 million units, it said. In Q2 ended June 30, large-sized panel shipments exceeded 28.5 million units, up 16.5 percent over Q1 and 14.3 percent over Q2 a year earlier, it said. AU shipped 42.5 million small- and medium-sized panels in Q2, up 12.6 percent from Q1, but down by 11.5 percent from Q2 a year earlier, it said. AU defines a large-size panel as anything larger than 10 inches, it said.

The Society for Information Display is soliciting “original contributed papers” on the subject of vehicle displays for publication in a special section of its Journal of the SID during Q1, SID said in a “call for papers” notice emailed Wednesday to SID members and to attendees of its recent Display Week conference in San Francisco (see 1605230032). “Papers can deal with technological aspects of manufacturing, image quality and reliability issues, form factors, deformability, power consumption, human factors related to the use of vehicle displays.” Deadline is Sept. 15, it said.

Global demand for “innovative” flexible displays for wearables and other mobile devices will increase by more than 300 percent to around $15 billion in 2022, from $3.7 billion this year, IHS said in a Tuesday report. Flexible displays will generate 13 percent of total display market revenue in 2020, IHS said. LG and Samsung launched the first smartphones with flexible active-matrix OLED displays three years ago, and “inspired by these successes, other mobile manufacturers are now developing their own flexible-display devices,” it said. Though only a few suppliers “are now regularly supplying flexible displays to the market,” many more panel makers “are now attempting to build flexible display capacity, leveraging the latest AMOLED display technology,” it said.

Shipments by area of wide color gamut (WCG) displays, including those for quantum-dot and OLED TVs and monitors, are expected to reach 32 million square meters in 2018, comprising 17 percent of total display shipment area, IHS said in a Tuesday report. “As competition in the display market intensifies, display and TV manufacturers are looking for new and emerging technologies to differentiate their offerings from competitors and to provide consumers with higher screen resolution,” IHS said. “WCG technologies are therefore becoming more popular.” IHS thinks cadmium-free quantum-dot displays will be 80 percent of the total quantum dot display market in 2016. OLED WCG display shipment area is forecast to reach 4.4 million square meters in 2016, growing to 9.2 million square meters in 2018, it said. Quantum-dot WCG display shipment area will reach 13.4 million square meters in 2018, rising from 6.1 million square meters in 2016, it said.

LG’s business solutions unit introduced the first OLED display for the digital signage market at Infocomm, said the company. The dual-view display will begin shipping next month, LG said. Profile of the flat display is 0.4-inch deep. The commercial portfolio also includes a curved tiling OLED display.

The industry’s migration to larger TV screens will result in a 7 percent increase in 2016 TV panel shipments in terms of area size even as TV panel unit shipments decline 7 percent, IHS Technology said in a report. “Falling prices are causing panel makers to focus on the most profitable products, including larger displays and those employing newer display technologies,” the research firm said Thursday. “From the panel maker’s perspective, area shipment is more important than unit shipments, so panel makers are accelerating the migration to larger TV panel sizes and higher resolutions.” Display manufacturers are targeting a 24 percent year-over-year shipment growth rate for 48-inch-and-larger panel sizes, which are expected to reach 93 million units in 2016, IHS said. Shipments of 4K LCD TV panels are expected to grow 73 percent in 2016, reaching 66 million units, it said.

UniPixel in the past year has established itself as “an important metal-mesh touch-sensor supplier,” CEO Jeff Hawthorne said on a Thursday earnings call. The company has scored 14 touch-sensor design wins for “computing devices that will hit the market later this year and into 2017,” he said. The 14 wins “span a spectrum from tablets, to laptops, to 2-in-1 convertible computers, to point-of-sale devices,” he said. “We have received these orders from U.S.-based companies, as well as international manufacturers.” As UniPixel continues to prove its ability “to deliver on our current multiple program wins, this will pave the way for us to move into consumer product platforms with volumes that are five to ten times larger,” Hawthorne said. UniPixel’s touch-sensor products “are significantly differentiated from those that are currently in wide adoption,” he said. “We see evidence that the market is shifting in favor of metal-mesh, our base technology, as consumers are demanding devices that are thinner, lighter, faster, with highly responsive touch-screens and advanced stylish capabilities.” The company’s recent design wins “reflect the advantage of our unique technology and our creativity in designing real world solutions for the next-generation of computing devices,” he said. Since late-2015, UniPixel at its plant in Colorado Springs has generated “significant cost savings” with the in-house manufacturing of the “base code” for its metal-mesh-screen touch-screen sensors, he said. This positioned UniPixel “more competitively in the market in terms of price and manufacturing yields,” he said. “We still have a long way to go to get to where we want to be. However, we have made great progress in a relatively short period of time.” UniPixel just over a year ago terminated the joint development agreement on copper-mesh touch-sensor technology it shared with Kodak since 2013, saying the risks of developing a viable business model were “too great” (see 1504280030).

IHS estimates the global display market for wearables could be worth $3.9 billion in 2020, the research firm said in a Tuesday infographic. It based the estimate on shipments of 150 million smartwatches and 13 million smart glasses, it said.

As smartphones mature and market growth slows, display manufacturers “are looking to new in-cell and on-cell touch-screen solutions that offer consumers thinner and brighter displays, while shortening the supply chain for smartphone manufacturers,” IHS said in a Thursday report. As panel makers promote these new solutions and offer aggressive pricing, in-cell and on-cell touch solutions are expected to comprise half of all smartphone displays shipped in 2017, IHS said. With the advent of active-matrix OLED displays used in smartphones, “new touch solutions are emerging that boast greater flexibility, lighter weight and other feature improvements,” it said. Emerging touch solutions for flexible displays are expected to grow by more than half in 2016 over last year, “which will bolster revenue levels,” it said. Since Samsung released its Galaxy S6 Edge last year, flexible smartphone displays “have grabbed consumer and industry attention,” IHS said. “Flexible AMOLED displays offer many more features than traditional rigid AMOLED and LCD displays, which is an attractive proposition for device makers and consumers.”

Corning added a personalization feature to Gorilla Glass, allowing customers to tailor mobile devices with color and decorative designs, the company said. Vibrant Corning Gorilla gives manufacturers ways to differentiate products without compromising “durability and clarity,” said Scott Forester, director-Gorilla Glass Innovations. With Vibrant Corning Gorilla, the company prints a customized design for smartphones, tablets or notebooks on Corning Gorilla Glass, “including gradient colors and logos, photo-quality images and multi-color decorations,” it said. Since 2007, Gorilla Glass has been used on 4.5 billion devices worldwide from 40 major brands, Corning said.