Tag Archives: sony

QLED name for the whole display industry to use

August 21, 2017 by Jennifer Colegrove Ph.D., Principal Analyst, Touch Display Research Inc.

I’ve been writing articles about quantum dot technologies since 2008. In 2013, I surveyed many quantum dot suppliers and published the first “Quantum Dot Display (QLED) and Lighting Technologies and Market Forecast Report”. According to my industry friend, a CTO at a famous quantum dot company, he said, “Jennifer, you are the first analyst who wrote a quantum dot market report, as far as I know.”

Quantum dot (including quantum rod, or tetrapod-shaped quantum dot) could improve picture quality of displays dramatically in terms of color gamut, color accuracy and reducing power consumption compared to conventional Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)/ Light Emitting Diode (LED) displays. This is one of the biggest breakthrough technologies for display in several years. Quantum dot LCD is challenging AMOLED displays.

QD Vision and Sony brought quantum dot TVs to the market in 2013.
Nanosys, 3M and Amazon brought quantum dot tablet PCs to the market in 2013.
Samsung announced the first Cadmium-free quantum dot TV at CES 2015, and has been commercializing it since Q1 2015.
LG Electronics also announced quantum dot TV at CES 2015, (but later LG changed strategy about quantum dot).
Quantum dot was a hot topic at CES 2015 to 2017, at SID DisplayWeek from 2013 to 2017, and at IFA 2014 to 2017.

According to the “Quantum Dot Display and Lighting Technologies and Market Forecast 2017 Report”, the quantum dot display has grown from zero dollar revenue in 2012 to a billion-dollar display category in 2017. The quantum dot display formed a new category—QLED (Quantum dot based Light Emitting Diode).

The definition of QLED has not yet been defined within the display industry. In the early years, “QLED”, or “QDEL”, or “QD-LED” were used in academic papers to call the electro-luminescent (EL) types of quantum dot. When an electric current is applied to these types of material, it will generate light. At this moment in 2017, the EL types of quantum dot are still in the R&D stage.

Currently, 100% the quantum dot display that is commercially available is the photo-luminescent (PL) type quantum dot. When a short wavelength light (such as blue light) shines on a certain quantum dot, then it can emit a longer wavelength light (such as green or red).

In 2016, Samsung Electronics has applied for the trademark “Samsung QLED TV” with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Samsung indicated that although they own the “Samsung QLED TV” trade mark, the “QLED” name is a common term like OLED TV or LED TV. “QLED” can be used by the whole display industry as a category name to call any displays with quantum dots in it.

Figure: QLED category includes PL (Photo-luminescent) and EL (Electro-luminescent) types of quantum dot

Source: Touch Display Research, 2017

Touch Display Research believes it is a good idea to use QLED as an umbrella name (or category name) to call any displays with quantum dots in it. Under the QLED umbrella name, the photo-luminescent (PL) type quantum dot can be called QLED PL type. The electro-luminescent (EL) types of quantum dot can be called QLED EL type.

QLED is a nice and short name. There is no need to reserve the QLED name for the EL type quantum dot only, since EL type is not in the market yet. When the EL type quantum dot enters the market (we forecast it will be after 2019), we can call it: QLED EL type under the QLED umbrella.

In April 2017, three large TV suppliers (Samsung, Hisense, TCL), a supply chain (Nanosys), and five large retailers in China (GOME Electrical Appliances, Suning Commerce Group, JD.com, Five Star and Sundan) have agreed to form the QLED TV Alliance in Beijing China. TCL has also enhanced the support of QLED by launching new QLED TVs globally since May.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

New Trends

About Touch Display Research Inc.

Touch Display Research, Inc. (www.TouchDisplayResearch.com) is a technology market research and consulting firm specializing in touch screen and emerging display technologies such as OLED displays, quantum dots, flexible displays, e-paper displays, ITO-replacement, Active pen, near-eye displays, gesture controls, voice recognition, and eye tracking. Touch Display Research helps technology companies grow and connecting their technologies to the marketplace. We have been writing about OLED industry for over 10 years. We were the first company to publish Quantum Dot market reports. We were the first company to publish Active Pen market report, and ITO-replacement market report. We have always been there to analyze new and emerging technologies. Touch Display Research provides reports, consulting, and due diligence to touch suppliers, display manufacturers, consumer electronics ODMs/OEMs, material suppliers, investors and venture capitalists. We are member of Flextech Alliance, SEMI and SID.

CES 2017: the battle between OLED and Quantum Dot

Jan 17^th, 2017, by Touch Display Research

At CES 2017, the battle between OLED display and Quantum Dot display is heating up.

Figure: CES 2017

Photo source: Jennifer Colegrove

Samsung, TCL, Hisense are geared up of new TVs with quantum dot technologies in them.

LG, Sony, Skyworth are showing more and larger OLED TVs.

There also comes Nano Cell and Nano Color.

Who will won this battle? Which company will benefit? Why did Samsung acquire QD Vision? What is the new form factors of quantum dot? What are the new directions of OLED?

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, CEO and Principal Analyst at Touch Display Research will give a presentation about OLED vs Quantum Dot market to 2027 at the one-day conference (Feb 3, 2017) hosted by the SID Los Angeles chapter in Costa Mesa, California, and will visit companies in the area.

Society for Information Display Los Angeles Chapter 2017 one-day conference, will be held at Costa Meda, California on February 3^rd, 2017. It’s a One-Day Focused Technical and Business Conference. LA Chapter director: Larry Tannas. Chapter Chairman: Larry Iboshi. Location: Costa Mesa Country Club, 1701 Golf Course Drive, Costa Mesa CA 92626. February 3, 2017 8AM-4:00PM. The conference website is: http://www.sid.org/Chapters/Americas/LosAngelesChapter/Symposium.aspx

Hope to see you at the conference.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with active pen

May 20, 2014
Today Microsoft announced their new tablet PC: Surface Pro 3. It’s an improvement version over the Surface Pro 2. Although both tablets are with active pen, Surface Pro 3 is 32% thinner at only 0.36 inch, while the Surface Pro 2 is 0.53 inch thick. How does Microsoft Surface group achieve the thinness? The answer is in the touch and active pen technology.
Figure. Surface Pro 3 with active pen

Source: Microsoft, May 2014

Simultaneous finger touch and pen writing are the ideal human machine interface. Active pen technology is superior to passive pen in terms of accuracy, pressure sensing, and input of fine line. In our recently released Active pen technologies supply chain and market forecast 2014 report, we forecast that active pen usage will have rapid growth in the next several years.
Touch Display Research’s “Active pen 2014 report” provides analysis of over a dozen digital pen technologies: nine active pen technologies and six passive pen technologies. All the Android and Windows devices with active pen are compared side by side in a single chart.
The attitude of leading brands toward active pen is analyzed. This includes Samsung, Sony, Intel, HP, Dell, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Apple. You can subscribe to the report right now on our website.

Thanks for reading,
Jennifer and team

CES 2014 What to Expect

December 20, 2013

I’ll travel to International CES 2014 in Las Vegas in early January. CES is one of the most crowded consumer electronic shows in the world with over 150,000 attendees.

Here are what to expect:

OLED display. We expect Samsung and LG will demo large size AMOLED TV at CES 2014, just as they did in last year. But this time it’ll be one level higher: we expect to see 4K and larger size. Other companies, such as Sony, AUO, Panasonic will also demo 4K OLED TV.

Touch Display Research forecasts that by 2020 the OLED TV market will reach $15.5 billion. 2016 will be the takeoff year for OLED TVs with billions of dollars of revenue each year after that.

2. 8K display. We expect to see 8K display at CES 2014. More analysis can be found in our “Touch and Emerging Display report” December 2013 report.

3. Quantum dot is adopted in LCD to improve color gamut and reduce power consumption. At CES 2014, we’ll see Sony’s Triluminos TV with quantum dot from QD Vision. We might also see Hisense demo quantum dot TV as well.

Quantum dot could improve Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) dramatically in terms of color gamut, color accuracy and reducing power consumption. This is one of the biggest breakthrough technologies for LCD in recent several years. Now quantum dot LCD is challenging AMOLED.

Touch Display Research forecasts that the quantum dot display and lighting component market will reach $9.6 billion by 2023.

4. We’ll also see many flexible/curved display at CES 2014, such as curved OLED TV, curved LCD TV, curved smart watches, wearable devices.

Touch Display Research forecasts 30 million units flexible and curved displays will be shipped for smart watch application by 2023.

Overall flexible and curved display market will reach $27 Billion by 2023.

5. ITO-replacement. At CES 2014, we’ll see many touch screen devices, from mobile phone to large public signage. ITO-replacement transparent conductor is penetrating to touch screens very rapidly. ITO-replacement attracted over 200 companies and research Institutes. We expect to see metal mesh, silver nanowire and other ITO-replacement touch panels at the show.

Touch Display Research forecasts the non-ITO transparent conductor market will grow from $206 million in 2013 to $4 billion by 2020.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Sony moving in the right direction: Emerging displays and touch playing a key role

August 5, 2013

Sony Corporation has lost money five years in a row. However, during both this May and August Sony announced good news: it swung back to a profit in its fiscal fourth quarter (FYQ4 ended on March 31^st) and fiscal first quarter (FYQ1 ended on June 30^th). The main contribution to this new profitability is “lifted by the first black ink in 3 years at its long-struggling TV business” as indicated by Wall Street Journal on August 1.

So far, I think the new CEO Kazuo Hirai is steering Sony in the right direction, and emerging display and touch technologies are playing a key role:

As we covered in the monthly “Touch and Emerging display report”, Sony has released several 4K TVs. Sony has adopted QD Vision’s quantum dots on some of its TVs for better color and lower power consumption.
Sony is still manufacturing AMOLED professional monitors and successfully selling these at high price, leading to profitability
Sony is planning a flexible e-Paper display (from E Ink) tablet with pen-writing function by end of this year.
Sony added more pen-writing notebook PCs.
Recently Sony has unveiled SmartWatch 2 with a larger 1.6” 220×176 touch display (the original SmartWatch has a 1.3” 128X128 OLED display).

Figure: Sony upcoming flexible display tablet with pen

Photo by: Touch Display Research Inc.

Although a profitable quarter is good news, the profit of FYQ1 is only 3.5 billion Yen, a 0.2% profit margin. It is still left to be seen if Sony can maintain profitability the entire fiscal year.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team