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Increasing the Scope of the OLED Market
As OLED panel makers look to expend their range of applications, notebooks, tablets and monitors are an obvious target. But they come with some challenges:
Table 1: IT Panel Requirements
As OLED panel makers look to expend their range of applications, notebooks, tablets and monitors are an obvious target. But they come with some challenges:
- Side-by-side panels are more expensive to produce than LTPS LCDs
- The typical applications (e.g., MS Office) have large amounts of white space, where OLEDs consume more power than LCDs
- Some monitor applications require the same image for long time periods, inducing image sticking
- Samsung uses Gen 6 fabs to produce notebook displays and it is not as cost effective as Gen 7 for the panel size.
- The OLED advantages of form factor, wide viewing angles, purer color gamut are not as pertinent as in smartphones and TVs, where video is a key driver.
Table 1: IT Panel Requirements
However, the notebook (including the Chromebook) and tablet are changing to incorporate OLED features, including flexible displays for lower weight, foldable displays for combining uses, and perhaps even rollable display to minimize the entire form factor. Moreover, the use of smartphone based electronics for 5G, under panel cameras, integrated touch and fingerprint security should help in both design and cost reduction when OLEDs are used. New designs are also incorporating rigid panels with TFE to reduce the weight and keep costs down.
Figure 1: Notebook Form Factor Evolution
Figure 1: Notebook Form Factor Evolution
Figure 2: Hybrid OLED Design
Another improvement that has been demonstrated by Kopin is the use of dual stacks, increases the number of emitting layers and contributes to a doubling or even tripling the luminance, without reducing the lifetime, a feature that is addressed at monitors. The small increase in price to account t=for the added emitter/host (less than 3%) would make OLED panels more competitive for monitors but more importantly for TVs.
Figure 3: OLED Brightness by Dual Stack
Figure 3: OLED Brightness by Dual Stack
Another improvement, that is likely to help with all applications is the narrowing of the spectrum, which is being spearheaded by UDC to get more luminance out of a given current. In the next article, we highlight Samsung’s efforts to ship 1m OLED notebooks in 2021. The company already ships ~1m OLED tablets. Finally. Apple plans to release both OLED iPads and MacBooks, beginning in late 2021.
Table 2: Apple’s IT Panel Technology Forecast
Table 2: Apple’s IT Panel Technology Forecast
Omdia forecast shipments for the three applications to reach 17m by 2025, up from 4m in 2021. But if all the improvements are implemented the volume might reach 60m by 2025.
Figure 4: OLED Demand Forecast. – Realistic and Optimistic
Figure 5: IT OLED Panel Requirements
