LG OLED – Getting smaller But Bigger
LG Display is the world’s only supplier of OLED panels for TVs and has set the tone for large panel OLED products, offering WOLED displays from 97” down to 42”, with flexible, rollable and transparent offering across many of those sizes. LGD’s TV OLED displays are based on technology that uses a substrate coated with yellow/green and blue OLED materials that produce a white light which passes through a color filter that consists of red, green, and blue phosphors that convert the white light to the colors necessary to produce highly color accurate images. While this differs from smaller OLED displays that pattern red, green, and blue OLED emitters and do not need a color filter, limitations on the size of RGB OLED displays keeps the technologies from overlapping and given LGD’s experience in producing large panel OLED displays, the competition in the large panel space is limited.
Gamers push the display envelope, looking for larger, faster and more accurate displays, and OLED displays for gaming and monitors have become increasingly popular but at these smaller sizes, the choice of OLED technologies becomes more difficult and with Samsung Display’s QD/OLED the choices become even more complicated. Small panel OLED producers are looking to find ways to bypass the size limitations of RGB OLED displays while LGD is looking to reduce the size of its displays to further feed the gaming market while still using existing OLED resources. To that end LGD has indicated that it will introduce a 20” OLED display by the end of this year, which we assume will utilize its WOLED technology, while it works toward the commercialization of an RGB OLED process that is feasible for such panel sizes. Samsung Display and others are looking to also find ways to bypass the RGB size restrictions to feed such demand but those projects are in the development stage, leaving LG Display’s smaller OLED panel size seeing only minor competition from ink-jet printed panels from JOLED (pvt), which seem to be produced in relatively small quantities.
If LGD is able to produce 20” or 21.5” displays under it current WOLED process it would have an efficiency advantage over those OLED producers that use Gen 6 fab lines as LGD’s large panel OLED lines are based on Gen 8.5. Not only does this give LGD the ability to produce between 35 (21.5”) and 40 (20”) panels on a single substrate vs. 18 and 21 on a Gen 6 line, giving economies of scale, but also increases the substrate efficiency (the used substrate/total substrate size) from 85% to 93%, and while this doesn’t seem like a big advantage, when multiplied by hundreds of thousands or millions of units, it adds up.
LGD has also indicated that it is working with a customer to design a flexible gaming panel with a curvature that can be adjusted by the user. This would allow a gamer to adapt the OLED display to the needs of particular games, some of which require extreme focus on the center of the display while others need more peripheral viewing, which would be enhanced by a tighter curvature. LGD was quick to point out that its WOLED displays, which are based on a single substrate, would be able to provide such a function, while SDC’s QD/OLED displays, which are based on two substrates (OLED and quantum dots) would not.
All in, LGD continues to squeeze as much as possible out of its investment in WOLED which has given it the ability to maintain the massive lead it has in large panel OLED display production, and anything that extends those capabilities should be a plus, but we expect as sizes get down to around 20” the competition from small panel OLED producers will become intense, even if they are less efficient, and by the end of 2023 we expect there will be at least some Gen 8.5 RGB OLED capacity that will compete directly with LGD in that panel size category. Grab the ring as soon as possible as new contenders are waiting in the wings…
Gamers push the display envelope, looking for larger, faster and more accurate displays, and OLED displays for gaming and monitors have become increasingly popular but at these smaller sizes, the choice of OLED technologies becomes more difficult and with Samsung Display’s QD/OLED the choices become even more complicated. Small panel OLED producers are looking to find ways to bypass the size limitations of RGB OLED displays while LGD is looking to reduce the size of its displays to further feed the gaming market while still using existing OLED resources. To that end LGD has indicated that it will introduce a 20” OLED display by the end of this year, which we assume will utilize its WOLED technology, while it works toward the commercialization of an RGB OLED process that is feasible for such panel sizes. Samsung Display and others are looking to also find ways to bypass the RGB size restrictions to feed such demand but those projects are in the development stage, leaving LG Display’s smaller OLED panel size seeing only minor competition from ink-jet printed panels from JOLED (pvt), which seem to be produced in relatively small quantities.
If LGD is able to produce 20” or 21.5” displays under it current WOLED process it would have an efficiency advantage over those OLED producers that use Gen 6 fab lines as LGD’s large panel OLED lines are based on Gen 8.5. Not only does this give LGD the ability to produce between 35 (21.5”) and 40 (20”) panels on a single substrate vs. 18 and 21 on a Gen 6 line, giving economies of scale, but also increases the substrate efficiency (the used substrate/total substrate size) from 85% to 93%, and while this doesn’t seem like a big advantage, when multiplied by hundreds of thousands or millions of units, it adds up.
LGD has also indicated that it is working with a customer to design a flexible gaming panel with a curvature that can be adjusted by the user. This would allow a gamer to adapt the OLED display to the needs of particular games, some of which require extreme focus on the center of the display while others need more peripheral viewing, which would be enhanced by a tighter curvature. LGD was quick to point out that its WOLED displays, which are based on a single substrate, would be able to provide such a function, while SDC’s QD/OLED displays, which are based on two substrates (OLED and quantum dots) would not.
All in, LGD continues to squeeze as much as possible out of its investment in WOLED which has given it the ability to maintain the massive lead it has in large panel OLED display production, and anything that extends those capabilities should be a plus, but we expect as sizes get down to around 20” the competition from small panel OLED producers will become intense, even if they are less efficient, and by the end of 2023 we expect there will be at least some Gen 8.5 RGB OLED capacity that will compete directly with LGD in that panel size category. Grab the ring as soon as possible as new contenders are waiting in the wings…
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