Tag Archives: Samsung

Taiwan touch manufacturers grasp new opportunities

August 8, 2013

(Editor’s note: Dr. Jennifer Colegrove will be traveling to Taipei, Taiwan later this month to speak at the International Display Manufacturing Conference (IDMC) and to visit TouchTaiwan 2013.)

“I am honored to be delivering a special forum at the conference, and eager to meet Taiwan’s touch screen manufacturers and emerging display manufacturers,” said Dr. Colegrove.

Jennifer will be speaking on August 28th, 13:20-13:45 at a special forum of the IDMC conference which is in conjunction with TouchTaiwan exhibition. Contact her by email: jc@touchdisplayresearch.com

 IDMC touchtaiwan

Blog:

Taiwan is one of the most active regions in touch screen manufacturing. In 2006-2007, Apple’s iPhone brought revolutionary changes to the touch screen industry. Touch panel companies at the forefront such as TPK, Wintek, Youngfast, J-Touch rode the wave and grew rapidly.

Recently, display and touch screen integration have become necessary to reduce cost, weight, and thickness. This has led display manufacturers such as AUO, Innolux (used to be named ChiMei Innolux), and CPT to grasp an opportunity and supply the new devices.

In 2013 a wave of new opportunities and challenges are approaching. Touch Display Research analyzed the growth opportunities in:

  1. Large smart phone (>5”)
  2. Touch technology for notebook and all-in-one PCs
  3. ITO-replacement materials
  4. Multi-touch and simultaneous pen writing
  5. Touchless control

I am honored to be delivering a special forum at the conference and eager to meet Taiwan’s touch screen and display manufacturers.

Jennifer and team

Our Mission at Touch Display Research

July 11, 2013

Our mission is to provide accurate industry knowledge, up-to-date information, forward-thinking analysis and the best business strategy recommendations to our clients.

Jenny sit

At SID 2013 I visited LG Display’s exhibition booth and asked the booth attendants about their flexible AMOLED. Another visitor happened to be standing there looking at the flexible AMOLED too. I asked the LG booth attendants, “Does this flexible display use the color filter method?”

The LG booth people answered, “No, this demo doesn’t use a color filter.”

I nodded. At this point, the other visitor jumped in and said, “OLED doesn’t need a color filter, it’s not LCD.”   The visitor looked like an intelligent young man, but only knew part of the technology. I explained to him, “Some OLEDs use a color filter––LG’s OLED TV uses white OLED plus a color filter.” 

The young visitor looked at me with doubt, “Really? I don’t think so.” Then he started to talk to the LG booth people, “I saw your CEO gave a keynote two days ago.” The LG booth people asked, “Where?”

The young visitor said, “The keynote at the beginning of this SID.”

I came to SID 2013 on Tuesday afternoon and missed the keynote talk that morning, but I knew the keynote speaker had been Samsung Display’s CEO, not LG’s CEO. I said, “That was Samsung’s.”  The LG booth people also said, “Our CEO didn’t come this time. Maybe it was Samsung’s.”

But the young visitor didn’t hear me, and kept chatting with the LG booth people.

I walked away with a bit of heartbreak and sympathy for the young visitor.

I recently saw presentation slides from a university professor. In one slide he indicated IGZO TFT was still in R&D stage. I looked at the presentation time––March 2013. I know that Sharp announced the mass production of IGZO TFT in April 2011, and finally mass produced it in April 2012. I met Sharp’s CTO in April 2012. Obviously, that professor had out-dated information and hadn’t followed Sharp’s progress in IGZO.

There are many people like that young visitor and the professor who only know part of the technology, part of the story, and unfortunately provide wrong opinions. They don’t know that AMOLED can have color filter too, they can’t tell Samsung from LG, they don’t know that Sharp has already mass-produced IGZO since 2012, but they are willing to spread wrong information.   

I’m concerned about these people and the people they advise. I feel as a Ph.D. and experienced technology analyst, I have the responsibility to provide to my clients correct knowledge, up-to-date information, forward-thinking analysis, and best business strategies.

LG and Samsung drop lawsuits; Samsung may adopt LG’s OLED technology

 

Feb 21, 2013

On Feb 20th, Korea Times reported that LG Display has dropped its injunction against Samsung Display Corporation.

Samsung and LG have had a fierce competition for decades. Recently the Korean government has become involved and ordered the two companies to talk to each other. Several weeks ago, Samsung dropped its lawsuit against LG Display over OLED technology. Yesterday, LG Display dropped its lawsuit against Samsung over IPS LCD technology.

The announcement comes after Samsung surprisingly decided to adopt LG’s white OLED plus color filter technology. According to Samsung officials the company will start the manufacture of AMOLED with white OLED plus color filter technology in late 2013.

I believe this cooperation is mainly caused by progress by other regions in AMOLED. See our “Large AMOLED TV Summary and Comparison” of LG, Samsung, Sony, AUO, and Panasonic.

Figure. Large AMOLED TV Summary and Comparison

oled tv tablet with cr

Source: Touch Display Research, Touch and Emerging Display Monthly Report, Jan. 2013

In January 2013, LG Electronics officially launched the 55” OLED TV with 1080p resolution in the South Korean market, priced at about $10,000. LG later announced that it would bring the OLED TV to the U.S. market in March 2013, priced at $12,000.

On the other hand, Samsung has no follow-up of when to bring its 55” OLED TV to the market yet.

LG’s 55” OLED TV uses white OLED plus RGBW color filter method for the color patterning, and using oxide TFT for the backplane. Samsung’s 55” OLED TV demo uses RGB chemical vapor deposition and LTPS TFT for the backplane. Current commercialization situation confirmed that LG’s method is more achievable, or can achieve higher yield and lower cost in 2013.

Sony, AUO, and Panasonic brought OLED TVs to a higher level: Ultra HD (4K) resolution. Samsung and LG’s OLED TV stayed at FHD (1080p), but they made them curved this year.

With the other region’s AMOLED competition, it’s a good decision for LG and Samsung to cooperate. Will Samsung adopt white OLED method to only TV or to other size AMOLED?  What is the pros and cons of white OLED method? Will Samsung abandon (bottle up) its other color patterning technologies? More analysis can be found in our Touch and Emerging Display monthly report.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Microsoft Jeff Han keynote about touch and pen technologies

Jeff Han keynote with cr2I volunteered for SID (Society of Information Display) Bay-Area chapter, and helped with organizing the first 1-day “Display and Touch Technologies of the future 2013” conference as a conference co-chair. After 5 months of preparation, the 1-day conference was held on Jan 16th, 2013, and it was overwhelmingly successful with 160 attendees.

Microsoft’s Jeff Han and Intel’s Achin Bhowmik gave keynote presentations.

I had the honor to introduce the morning keynote: Jeff Han, General manager of Microsoft office division. Jeff Han was famous about promoting multi-touch since 2006, 1 year before the Apple’s iPhone in the market. Han was the CEO, founder and chief scientist of Perceptive Pixel since 2006. Han was named to Time magazine’s listing of the 100 Most Influential People in The World in 2008. His company was acquired by Microsoft mid-2012.

Jeff Han brought a 50” touch screen display demo to this 2013 conference. In his keynote, he first showed the video of touch being used by CNN for the president election news. Then he introduced some advanced research that Microsoft is doing. He walked to his touch display and demoed the touch and pen writing. He said, “When you are in the drawing mode, then you want to go to the next page, you do a swipe. But the screen shows you a line. Now you realized that you are in the drawing mode, not the touch mode. Then you have to go here, click this button to switch to touch mode. You see, that break the flow.” He emphasized that with simultaneous touch and pen technology, user can have the smooth flow.

As Jeff Han emphasized that with simultaneous touch and pen technology, user can have the smooth flow to work on the touch display.

Another touch company has touch and pen technology is N-trig. N-trig’s DuoSense had been adopted in several notebook PCs, such as the HP’s touchsmart 12.1”. DuoSense also was adopted in the HTC’s flyer tablet.

The most successful (with the high volume sold) touch and pen device might be the Samsung’s Galaxy Note. It’s a hybrid of phone and tablet (some people call this phablet). The Galaxy Note’s touch is the combination of an on-cell projected capacitive AMOLED with a wacom digitizer pen beneath the OLED display. Samsung reported that the original Galaxy Note sold 10 million units in 10 months. The Galaxy Note II is even more popular, with 5 million units sold in 2 months.

Thanks for reading.

Jennifer and team

Touch Display Research Inc.