AMOLEDs are enjoying rising usage in smart phones because of their wider viewing angle, higher refresh rates and thinner formats, compared to conventional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) used in most cell phones. The adoption of AMOLEDs also is being propelled by increasing manufacturing capacity from leading supplier Samsung Mobile Display.
AMOLED global shipments are expected to hit 49.4 million units in 2010 and grow to 271.2 million in 2015. SMD’s new Gen 5.5 AMOLED fab that just commenced operations. Most OLED displays use a LTPS backplane but in the near future amorphous silicon (a-Si), which is cheaper to manufacture, will likely be adopted. IGNIS has succeeded in developing a mobile AMOLED display using an a-Si backplane.
PC shipments in Western Europe totaled 14.7 million units in the first quarter of 2011, a decline of 17.8 percent from the same period in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc.
Meike Escherich, principal analyst at Gartner:
This quarter’s poor performance was due to excess inventory accumulated at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010 in many countries in Western Europe. The excess inventory was reduced only slightly, as demand came to a standstill. The seasonal growth was also weaker than expected, indicating that the downward trend seen at the end of 2010 continued into the first quarter of 2011.
Disposable spending on PCs was down and instead consumers bought tablets. But I thought tablets were considered PCs. Confusing. In the first quarter HP was #1 with 23.4% share, Acer #2 with 19.3%, and #3 was Dell with 9.6%.
Samsung Mobile Display puts its 5.5th-generation, or 1,300mm×1,500mm, AM OLED manufacturing lines into operation this month.
Samsung is two months ahead of schedule. The Gen 5.5 OLED fabrication plant is the world’s largest located in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. Samsung is differentiating its smartphones with its Super AMOLED and Super AMOLED Plus displays. With demand for its Galaxy S-line of smartphones growing Samsung will now be able to supply enough OLED displays with the new Gen 5.5 fab.
Until now, all AMOLED displays have been made with polysilicon backplanes, a higher-cost material. However amorphous silicon is an attractive material for AMOLED since it’s used to make most of the world’s LCD displays. Compared to polysilicon it’s highly uniform, less expensive, and represents 95% of the world’s manufacturing capacity for displays.
It was previously thought that amorphous silicon backplanes were unsuitable for OLED due to stability problems; however IGNIS technology has solved the stability problems, paving the way for this first product.
The IGNIS Innovation 3.47-inch 480×320 AMOLED display is the world’s first AMOLED display that makes use of an a-Si backplane. IGNIS will be showcasing its AMOLED display during SID 2011.
For example, red text on a black background looks like only every other pixel is turned on; this makes straight lines look ragged. Letters look serrated; the letter «S» looks as if it had two little horns sticking out at the top. Solid red areas look like tiny checkerboards. The same applies to blue things, although the effect is less obvious. Straight white lines look like dashed lines. Grey things sometimes look fuzzy.
iida: Yugo Nakamura is the genius behind the complete custom UI redesign on the KDDI INFOBAR A01. I like this much better than Google’s stock Android UI and front screen of Windows Phone 7 (WP7). In some ways the UI is more usable than even iOS.
The KDDI INFOBAR A01 sports a 3.7-inch TFT LCD with a pixel format of 960×540 good for resolution 300 ppi. The INFOBAR A01 is a world phone that works on both GSM and CDMA networks. Naoto Fukasawa designed the phone itself, which is simple and elegant. I especially like the large mechanical buttons.
Nanosys, Inc., an advanced materials architect, today announced that its next generation LCD technology, the Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF), is available to display manufacturers. Device designers can now increase color gamut by as much as 3x without making the trade offs in cost, size and brightness they’ve had to make in the past. This means richer, more viscerally vibrant reds and a deeper palette of greens – the color the human eye sees more intensely than any other color.
According to Nanosys most displays are limited to 20 to 35% of the colors that we can see. QDEF-based displays will increase that to 60%. The quantum dot material generates better quality white light using an energy-efficient blue LED.
E Ink will manufacture, sell and support the newly developed 300-dpi ePaper displays, which measure 9.68 inches on the diagonal and have 2,400 x 1,650 pixels. These paper-like, high-resolution displays demonstrate in full the very best features of ePaper: crisp and clear text and images on an easy-on-the-eyes screen, a thin and light form factor, and ultra-low power consumption.
Epson will build the display controller for the 9.68-inch 300-ppi e-paper. The 2400×1650 pixel format e-paper is being showcased during SID 2011. I’ll be taking a look at this high resolution e-paper later on today. The size of the display is interesting in that the current Kindle DX sports a 9.7-inch E Ink. It is exciting to think of the possibility that the next generation Kindle DX might incorporate this new 300-ppi e-paper from E Ink.
AGC:
AGC announced today it has developed ultra-thin sheet glass manufactured using the float process, measuring just 0.1 mm, roughly the thinness of a sheet of paper. Made from alkali-free glass, which is used as a glass substrate for TFT-LCDs, AGC’s unprecedentedly thin sheet float glass will be used in next-generation displays, lighting, touchscreens and high-tech applications such as medical devices.
Any gadget that sports a display would benefit from thinner glass and that includes mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, notebooks, but also non-mobile electronics like monitors and TVs. AGC’s 0.1-mm ultra-thin sheet glass using the company’s float process is extremely thin and would allow for even thinner and lighter LCDs. AGC will showcase its 0.1-mm sheet glass during SID 2011.
It’s a point of sales problem. It’s an expertise at retail problem. It’s a marketing problem to consumers. It is a price point problem. And it’s a software richness of content problem. Apple is not only better able to explain its product to consumers through dedicated sales people, but it also captures more margin than competitors who have to share margin with retail partners.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.