Category Archives: OLED

Samsung Gear Fit with curved displays at MWC 2014

February 25, 2014

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, Samsung announced its newest wearable device: Gear Fit. It has a 1.84” super AMOLED display, with 432X128 pixel format. (Please note, some website said it is 1.4”, which is wrong).

Figure: Samsung Gear Fit with curved display

gear fit

Source: Samsung, 2014

Samsung claims the Gear Fit is “the industry’s first curved, super AMOLED wearable device”. I think that is correct. Although there are a dozen smart watches entered the market recently, but most of them are using flat, rigid display. As Touch Display Research reported 4 months ago, we believe flexible and curved displays are more ergonomic for the wrist, and larger-sized flexible displays could fit better and show more information. The Gear Fit is what a smart watch should look like. We forecast 2 inch or larger curved display will be adopted in smart watch as well.

In the “Flexible and curved display technologies and market forecast” report, Touch Display Research forecasts 30 million units flexible and curved displays will be shipped for smart watch application by 2023.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

YotaPhone with two displays at MWC 2014

February 24, 2014

Today at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, YotaPhone and Cypress announced features on the 2nd generation YotaPhone: larger and better displays and both displays will have full touch screen.

Here is the spec comparison of the first and second generation YotaPhone:

Yota 1st and 2nd spec comp

Source: Yota Devices, compiled by Touch Display Research, Feb 2014

YotaPhone stands out from the crowd with its low power secondary display on the back, which is made by E Ink.

Touch Display Research believes flexible, thin, low power, good sunlight readability display will be suitable for secondary, cover display. For example, in a bright sunny day, when it’s hard to see the information on your mobile phone’s LCD or AMOLED display, you can use your secondary display to show the mobile phone information. In the “Flexible and Curved Display Technologies and Market Forecast” report, Touch Display Research forecast secondary display will have rapid growth from 2014.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Plastic Logic and Novaled OTFT backplane AMOLED

February 10, 2014

I just came back from the 2014 FLEX conference and the SID LA Symposium. There are many highlights in these 2 conferences. One of the exciting news is about the Organic TFT (OTFT) backplane AMOLED.

On Feb 6th, 2014, Plastic Logic’s director of research and partnerships, Mr. Mike Banach gave a presentation titled “A New Frontier for Flexible Displays”. At the same day, both Plastic Logic and Novaled announced their partnership and their demo of OTFT backplane AMOLED.

Their demo is a monochrome flexible AMOLED, targeting for wearable applications. Plastic Logic’s CEO, Indro Mukerjee, said, “2014 will be the year that wearable technology starts to go mainstream.”

Touch Display Research analyst agrees with that. 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.

Figure: Flexible and curved displays for smart watch application forecast to 2023

flexible curved smart watch

Source: Touch Display Research. “Flexible and Curved Display and Lighting Technologies and Market Forecast” report. September, 2013.

It is said Merck’s organic semiconductor material was used in the OTFT prototype.

As we covered in our “Flexible and Curved Display and Lighting Technologies and Market Forecast” report, Sony has demonstrated OTFT backplane AMOLED before.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Curved TVs flood the CES 2014

Jan 8, 2014

I’ve been at CES 2014 for 3 days by now. One big trend this year is: curved TV.

As we reported 2 days ago, Samsung showcased their curved TV and bendable TV at Monday’s press conference.

LG’s booth is also full of curved TVs. The most attractive one is the 77” 4K flexible OLED TV, which they claim is the world’s first 77” flexible 4K OLED TV. I think that is true.

Many other TV suppliers also showcased curved TV at this CES, such as Hisense, Haier, Konka, Panasonic.

Curved TVs provide a unique form factor and cinema-like immersive view. We believe the ecosystem of flexible and curved displays is maturing. Good progress has been made in many areas. TFT on plastic substrate is already commercialized; ultra-thin glass is commercially available; ITO-replacement material is in mass production; bond de-bond and roll-to-roll manufacturing processes and equipment used for flexible displays are more precise.

In our recently published Flexible and curved display and lighting report, Touch Display Research forecasts that the flexible and curved display market will reach $27 Billion by 2023.

More analysis can be found in our Touch and Emerging Display monthly report.

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:

  1. 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

Kateeva announced OLED inkjet printing equipment

November 30, 2013

On November 20, Kateeva announced the new equipment YIELDJET– an inkjet printing manufacturing equipment solution to produce OLEDs in high volume.  It’s the world’s first inkjet printer engineered from the ground up for OLED mass production.

I had the chance to visit Kateeva recently and met with their President and Co-founder Dr. Conor Madigan and CEO Alain Harrus. Here we are standing in front of the Gen 8 machine.

Figure: Left: Kateeva Dr. Conor Madigan. Right: Kateeva CEO Alain Harrus. The short person in the middle is me.

Kateeva visit

Photo source: Touch Display Research Inc. November 2013.

Kateeva is building a Gen 8 line, it’s almost finished when they showed to me. The equipment is built from ground up for the purpose of OLED.  The uniqueness is in 3 areas:

a.         It’ll have multiple nozzles to ensure good uniformity.

b.         It’ll be in Nitrogen environment to protect the OLED material.

c.         The glass substrate is floating on the air above the metal bars.

More analysis can be found in our “Touch and Emerging Display report” November 2013 issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team