Display panel makers’ capacity utilization is expected to decline to 73% in Q3, the lowest level for the sector in a decade, reported Omdia Tuesday. LCD TV panel prices plunged to new lows in June, as TV makers felt the pressure to continue slashing their panel demand for Q2 and “further downsizing panel purchasing plans” for Q3, it said. Samsung decided in mid-June to halt procurements to avoid “high inventory in the pipeline,” and that decision “will likely ripple across the display industry,” it said. In response to Samsung’s strong change in its displays and components sourcing strategy and amid growing financial losses in the TV panel business, panel makers had “no better choice than to cut their fab utilization rates significantly from June,” it said. The drop in fab utilization “directly leads to higher fixed costs and ultimately results in elevated production costs and profit deterioration, which is why manufacturers try to avoid it at all costs,” said Omdia analyst Alex Kang. “That panel makers have chosen to reduce utilization despite a drop in production and profitability implies that the current price plunge is excessively steep and that panel makers are attempting to stop profitability from further deteriorating.”

OLED panels are among the few “bright spots” in an otherwise weak 2022 display industry, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. It forecast 2022 OLED panel revenue will increase 2% year over year to $42 billion, helped by triple-digit year-over-year unit growth for game platforms and monitors and double-digit unit growth for laptops, tablets, TVs and automotive and augmented- and virtual-reality applications. DSCC forecast OLED smartphones will decline 4% year over year in units and 1% in revenue due to “macroeconomic headwinds, weakened consumer demand, persistent supply chain issues as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns in China and concerns regarding inventory product build up,” it said. The world’s major smartphone brands “have reduced their original OLED panel procurements for 2022 by single- and double-digit percentages,” it said.

Though the display industry is having a difficult year, the “advanced TV” market continued to grow year over year in Q1, “and this segment of the industry continues to look promising,” reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Wednesday. The LCD and OLED factions “played to a draw” during the quarter, “with both sides gaining volume and share largely unchanged,” it said. DSCC defines advanced TVs as including all OLED sets, plus all 8K LCD TVs and LCD sets with a quantum dot feature. Advanced TV shipments in Q1 increased 32% to 5.2 million units, it said.

Smart glasses and augmented reality will drive a $41 million Micro LED microdisplay market by 2026, reported TrendForce Wednesday. The market is expected to spike $36 million from 2025-2026 due to gradual maturity of technologies such as red chips, laser transfer, wafer bonding and full-colorization, which can improve yield and reduce production costs, said the research firm. Current Micro LED AR smart glasses are dominated by monochrome displays due to a full-color technology “bottleneck”; they can display only basic functions such as information prompts, navigation, translation and teleprompter applications, TrendForce said. After full-color technology matures, it will be used first in specialized applications in the military, medical surgery and testing instruments, and factory environment monitoring and maintenance tools fields, it said. Micro LED is at an early stage of AR application technology development, and design and manufacturing challenges have to be addressed, it said.

Q1 shipments of displays for advanced notebook PCs declined 26% sequentially from Q4 to 3.6 million panels but were up 438% year on year, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. DSCC blames inflationary concerns, weakened consumer demand and supply chain disruptions amid COVID-19 lockdowns for the softening quarter-on-quarter demand but says shipments are on pace for 120% growth in 2022 to 18 million panels. Though consumer notebook demand is weakening, Dell and HP report commercial demand remains strong “as a result of the two-to-three-year replacement cycle and more employees returning to the office,” said DSCC.

Samsung stopped issuing new flat-panel purchase orders and canceled current orders amid an industry-wide inventory glut, blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien. Samsung’s action “is the most recent and most dramatic of a larger picture of oversupply and excess capacity in the LCD industry,” said O’Brien Monday. Though the surge in consumer TV demand early in the COVID-19 pandemic caused a panel shortage that lasted until mid-2021, “price increases led LCD makers to increase supply while the demand peaked and started to decline,” he said. “The result has been a growing pile of inventory.” The excess inventory, continuing oversupply and anemic demand “will continue to put pressure on LCD panel prices across all applications,” said O’Brien. “Prices have reached cash costs for many panel makers but they may go even lower as companies try to raise cash by selling off excess inventory. A pattern of declining prices also sends a message to purchasing managers to delay purchases in order to get lower prices, so it may take some time for inventory to clear before the industry hits bottom.” Samsung didn’t comment Tuesday.

LG’s limited-edition OLED evo TV, announced last month (see 2205260044), went on sale Tuesday at LG.com for $2,999, the company emailed. The 65-inch C2 model, with a Star Wars-inspired user interface, aesthetics, packaging and “gallery of Star Wars content,” will be limited to 501 units in the U.S., said the company. The non-Star Wars version of the C2 evo is $2,299.

ViewSonic launched third-generation HD LED projectors with built-in Harman Kardon speakers Thursday. The X1 and X2 have improved brightness, to 3,100 lumens, and are rated as 125% Rec. 709 color gamut, the company said. The X1 is designed for ceiling mounting and has a 1.3x optical zoom lens. The short-throw X2 can be placed on a tabletop, projecting a 100-inch image from five feet away, it said. Prices weren’t given.

LG began shipping a "first-of-its-kind" dual monitor that stacks a pair of 28-inch displays to free up desk space for users requiring a dual-monitor workplace, the company said Thursday. The DualUp 28MQ780 ($699), with a Nano in-plane-switching display, has a 16:18 aspect ratio. The dual monitor supports 7Wx2ch stereo speakers with Waves MaxxAudio sound. Its stand has tilt, swivel and extracting features, the company said.

The Society for Information Display is making an 11th-hour effort to lure online exhibitors to its hybrid International Conference on Display Technology July 9-12 in Fujian, China. More than 3,000 “display professionals” are expected to visit the onsite exhibition this year, said SID Wednesday. The conference’s “exhibition global outreach platform” enables overseas exhibitors and online visitors to interact through Zoom with those on the ground in Fujian, it said. If COVID-19 makes attending the physical event “inconvenient,” organizers also will work with exhibitors outside China that want to showcase their goods “at a physical booth at the site,” bundling that virtual presence with “relevant promotion services during and after the exhibition,” it said.