Revenues:
Revenues and shipments increased as profits plummeted in the third quarter. LG Display (LGD) revenues increased 3.7% Q/Q and 6.7% Y/Y to ₩6268.73 billion in Q3’11. As you can see from the chart the overall revenue trend since 2003 has been up. Net income is a completely different story.
Net Income:
In Q2’11 LGD posted a net income of ₩21.3 billion, but Q3’11 turned out to be the second worst quarter in LGD history posting a net loss of ₩687.5 billion. Revenues increased but profits took a dive. What happened?
ASP:
The main reason for the poor performance is a persistent decline in ASP shown as ₩000 per square meter. ASP in Q3’11 declined 4.7% Q/Q and 5.2% Y/Y to ₩774,000 per square meter.
Input Capacity:
The main cause for the continued erosion of ASP is the continued increase in manufacturing capacity, which is calculated as glass substrate input capacity in millions of square meters. As you can see input capacity has continued to increase as far back as data is available.
In Q3’11 input capacity increased 2.7% Q/Q and 10.1% Y/Y to 11.5 million square meters. Most of this increase was geared toward large G8 fabs designed for LCD TV panel production. Unfortunately weak economic conditions have led to weak TV demand worldwide.
LGD does not break out profitability by application, but it is safe to assume the continued over dependence on TV led to a disastrous third quarter. Granted LGD has been reducing its dependence on TVs since Q3’10, when 58% of revenues came from LCD panels geared for TV applications. In Q3’11 only 47% of revenues came from TV.
Shipment:
Mature LCD fabs generally hit an overall yield of about 91%. But even so LCD shipments in square meters were only 77% of input capacity in Q3’11. LGD shipped 8.1 million square meters in Q3’11, an increase of 8.8% Q/Q and 12.5% Y/Y.
Generally third quarter is when most profits are made as the entire display supply chain reacts to a surge in demand by brands and retailers to build, ship, and stock what they think people will buy in November and December. Manufacturing activity cools down in the fourth quarter and it’s going to be rough for LCD manufacturers, including LGD.
via John Gruber. Edward Tufte:
There is no such hand in touchscreen computer devices. The touchscreen has no texture variation, has no physical surface information, is dead flat, reflects ambient light noise, and features oily fingerprint debris when seen at a raking angle. Also the elegant sharp edges that encase many touchscreens require users to desensitize their hands in order to ignore the physical discomfort produced by the aggressive edges. Last year in Cupertino, I yelled at some people about touchscreens that paid precise attention to finger touches from the user but not to how the device in turn touches the hands of the user (and produces divot edge-lines in the flesh).
I like the feeling of precision. The highly responsive capacitive multitouch glass. The slightest touch initiates a thousand little electrons to respond immediately. The CNC machined stainless steel chassis. They convey high tech.
You can get smartphones with softer and rounder edges, like the Lumia 800. They are usually made of plastic. Gruber mentions the plastic, or polycarbonate as Nokia would say it, “feels like a premium product.” Maybe plastic doesn’t have to convey cheap, but imagine this horrifying picture: a plastic iPhone 4.
As expected, Samsung isn’t taking any prisoners with its HD Super AMOLED display — the 4.65-inch 1280×720 pixel screen is simply gorgeous despite using a PenTile matrix. Fonts are crisp, colors are vibrant, blacks are deep, and viewing angles are exceptional.
Brute force pass a certain resolution threshold and once prominent visual flaws can now be hidden. The PenTile Matrix sub-pixel structure has found its minimum requirement for an optimal visual experience: mid-4.x inches and 1280×720 pixels.
The display on the Galaxy Nexus is a relatively significant feature here, as it’s one of the first devices to sport a full 720p screen. The 1280 x 720, 4.65-inch display is quite a handsome affair, utilizing Super AMOLED technology, which produces rich colors while keeping battery consumption to a minimum. While the screen is a pentile display, the crispness of text and images was far superior to most lower resolution pentile displays I’ve seen.
Update: US$299. December 15. There will probably be no lines at Verizon. John Gruber:
The biggest anti-iPhone difference in Android evolution is the ever-increasing size of the displays — the Galaxy Nexus’s measures 4.65 inches diagonally — and the corresponding increase in the overall size of the hardware.
Android phones are like those big wallets that can hold lots of credit cards, cash, receipts, and has a special window for an ID card. Big is good. The iPhone is like a credit card case, used as a wallet: One perfect size.
Update 2: MG Siegler, TechCrunch:
First and foremost, the Galaxy Nexus is way too big. The 4.65-inch screen is nice when I’m sitting on my couch, but out and about it feels like I’m Zack Morris holding his Gordon Gekko phone. I’d consider myself to have average sized hands for an adult male, and the screen is so large that it killed several one-handed operations for me (especially since many Android apps use a top nav system). I’ll admit that for some apps, like Gmail, having a screen larger than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch variety is very nice. But 4.3-inch may be better. This is just too big.
I’m guessing Siegler meant to say, "4.30-inch may be better, but this is just too big."
Update 3: Tim Stevens, Engadget, on the Verizon Galaxy Nexus:
And of course we can’t end the hardware discussion without discussing that superb 4.65-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED display. Yes, there’s been a lot talk about the RGBG pentile layout here and how that results in poor color reproduction, lower effective resolution and male pattern baldness. Those things may be true, but you’ll be too busy staring at it to care. It’s bright, it’s beautiful, the viewing angles are as close to 180 degrees as you can get.
And then there’s the resolution. If you have the eyesight to match the 316ppi pixel density you will love being able to browse desktop versions of websites without having to scroll all over the place. We loaded up Distro and were able to read full magazine pages without trouble — a task some tablets struggle with. It’s simply a great display, and the subtle curve given to the glass adds an extra touch of class.
I disagree the Galaxy Nexus has a 316 ppi display; it’s 207 ppi at best.
Update 4: via John Gruber. Danny Sullivan, Marketing Land:
The Galaxy Nexus screen is beautiful. When the iPhone’s Retina display came out, I definitely noticed a difference. This is the first Android phone that’s felt like it caught up in crispness.
Of course, you’ll see much more simply because the screen is bigger and has more resolution, 4.65″ and 1280×720 to the iPhone 4S screen of 3.5″ and 960×640.
Update 5: Shawn Blanc:
The screen of Galaxy Nexus is noticeably larger than the iPhone. In fact, it’s larger than any other phone I’ve held or even seen since the ’90s. Every single person I showed the phone to, their first comment was, this thing is huge.
I continue to wonder why smart product designers continue to make smartphones bigger when our hands are pretty much as big as they were years ago.
Also, the screen does not do well with large spots of dark color. Dark-colored websites (such as this one) seemed to have textured backgrounds. So did dark apps.
Another PenTile Matrix problem: texturizing large swaths of dark colors. Blanc does “not recommend this device simply on its size alone.”
Update 6: Anand Lai Shimpi:
For me at least, the Galaxy Nexus display exceeds my visual acuity – I cannot pick out subpixels at all on the Galaxy Nexus. Quite literally, the RGBG subpixel stripe is now small enough that it is beyond visual acuity at standard viewing distance (1 foot).
Sales of iPads at the end market totaled 11.12 million units in the third quarter of 2011, according to data released by Apple. However, inventories of parts and components prepared by the makers in the supply chain for the production of iPad 2 in the quarter are sufficient for the production of 15-16 million iPads, leaving a stockpile of 4-5 million units of iPad 2 in the supply chain, the sources noted.
Apple has reportedly reduced orders for 9.7-inch 1024×768 LCDs from September to October:
Let’s look at iPad sales by calendar year quarters:
Look at the jump in iPad sales in Q4’10. If the brief sales history is any indication we’re looking at 18M-20M iPad sales in Q4’11. All current component inventories in the supply chain should be used up for the manufacture of iPads in Q4’11. And it’s good to wind down component production because Q1’11 wasn’t so good and most likely neither will Q1’12. But there’s an additional reason.
The original iPad was introduced January 27, 2010 and became available three months later in April. The iPad 2 was introduced March 2, 2011 and made available nine days later. I expect Apple to unveil an iPad 3 in March 2012.
The iPad 3, which I think might be called iPad Pro, is expected to sport a Retina Display with a 2048×1536 pixel format. I’ve heard these 263-ppi IPS-equivalent displays are difficult to manufacture in large quantities. DIGITIMES reports that Samsung and Sharp are already shipping these displays in October. These are probably the initial small-quantity batch for EVT (Engineering Verification Testing) or DVT (Design Verification Testing) units.
With a late-Q1’12 launch of the iPad 3 in addition to having enough components to meet expected demand for the iPad 2 in Q4’11 the reported reduction of production levels of the current 9.7-inch LCD is Apple conducting smart supply chain management.
Update: DIGITIMES is reporting one million 9.7-inch Retina Displays shipped in October:
Samsung Electronics, LG Display and Sharp reportedly shipped a total of one million units of high-resolution flat panels for next-generation iPads to Apple in October and will ramp up shipments to two million units in November, according to industry sources.
According to my sources there have been significant challenges manufacturing these displays defect-free in high volume. And this was just a couple of weeks ago.
None of these notebooks we’ve tested are particularly big winners here, but it’s stunning just how poor the Z830 turns out to be.
Out of nine notebooks:
The Protege Z835 didn’t come in dead last on any of the comparisons. For instance, the ASUS Zenbook UX21 had horrible black levels at 2.71 nits. Absolutely dead last.
Thankfully viewing angles aren’t completely awful. [...] It’s still a pretty lousy screen, but it’ll get the job done at least.
Not if you’re on a plane. A US$879 ultrabook with a lousy screen? Pass.
Update: Dana Wollman, Engadget:
Granted, TN displays in general don’t offer great viewing angles, but they seem particularly narrow here. If you look at the display head-on with the brightness cranked up, you’ll enjoy pleasant colors and crisp-enough detail. Dip the lid forward, though, or watch from the sides and you’ll see the picture become washed out with more severe contrast.
One of the first things we noticed about the Folio is that the bezels are relatively narrow, at least compared to what you’ll usually see paired with such a common 1366 x 768 display. [...] As for the viewing angles, well, look at some of our hands-on photos and decide for yourself. Our early take is that they’re on par with what you’d get from other TN displays, which is to say, they’re not great (but not necessarily terrible either).
I think we need to be a bit more nuanced when talking about display viewing angles on notebooks. Horizontal viewing angles aren’t as important. And in some cases you want horizontal viewing angles to be somewhat limited for a bit of privacy. The more important are vertical viewing angles. Not everyone flies economy and not everyone is unfortunate enough to sit behind someone who has his seat tilted back all the way all the time. But more often than not you’ll be looking at your notebook at an angle that’s far from ideal and that’s when a LCD panel with good vertical viewing angles will come in handy. So the HP Folio 13 Ultrabook might be good enough despite the weak horizontal viewing angles.
But the weak pixel format of 1366×768 has got to go. The bar has been set for 13.3-inch ultrabooks by the MacBook Air and that’s 1440×900. But then again the Folio 13 Ultrabook starts at just US$900.
Just as before, the line comes in 15.6- and 17.3-inch variants, but these aren’t just normal LCD screens: the very bright Radiance Infinity displays are making a big comeback and are now standard across the lineup. Unfortunately, the base model is saddled with a 1366 x 768 resolution, but you can upgrade to a 1920 x 1080 panel. And even better the 17.3-inch model comes with that full HD display standard.
Radiance Displays-branded LCDs in HP notebooks have been highly praised in the past for their vivid colors and crisp resolution. I hope the new ones in the Envy 15 and 17 are just as good.
Update: Sean Hollister, The Verge:
We were originally told that the HP Envy 14′s luscious Radiance Display would come standard on the new Envy, but I’m sorry to say that’s not the case: the stock $1,100 Envy 15 comes with a 1366 x 768 “HP BrightView” screen, or you can pay an additional $150 for the 1920 x 1080 Radiance option. Our review unit came with the Radiance, so I can’t tell you how well the BrightView performs, but let’s face facts: if you can’t afford $1,249 for the real deal, you’re missing out. This bright, crisp, clear 1080p screen is one of the prime reasons to buy an Envy, and it’s a clear advantage over the 15-inch MacBook Pro, too, which tops out at just 1680 x 1050 resolution. Besides, trust me, 1366 x 768 just doesn’t cut it on a 15-inch screen.
A 1920×1080 pixel format on a 15.x-inch display. Sounds good, but the reality is the fonts and icons are too small for most folks. Yes, you can adjust ‘DPI’ settings on Windows, but not all parts of the UI plays nice and you end up with an uglier version of Windows. The one very good thing about 1920×1080 is watching 1080p HD video. Unfortunately the HP Envy 15 doesn’t have a Blu-ray option, but watching ripped Blu-ray movies on the road would probably be fantastic.
Update 2: The Radiance Display has problems showing red, displays orange instead. More info at Notebook Review’s forum.
via John Gruber. An excerpt Philip Elmer-DeWitt singled out from Robert X. Cringely’s interview with Steve Jobs in 1995:
You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. [...]
Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And it’s that process that is the magic.
Ask any magician. The more splendid the magic the more sweat was required.
- Don’t be fooled by the display’s current state of black lifelessness. When powered on, the LG-manufactured 7″ (diagonal) display gives users an eye-pleasing array of 16 million colors at a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.
- Sharing the screen with friends and family is made easy thanks to the application of In-Plane Switching (IPS) which allows for a wider viewing angle.
From what I could find the LG Display manufactured LD070WS2 line of 7-inch LCDs have these specifications:
I’m not certain the LD070WS2-SL05 is 8-bit. Most likely it’s 6-bit plus A-FRC to simulate 16.7 million colors. Another interesting spec is the 170/170 viewing angle. Most IPS LCDs sport viewing angles of 178/178 with a minimum contrast ratio of 10:1.
Update: Anand Lai Shimpi, AnandTech, took display measurements and they look quite good:
The Kindle Fire beats the iPad and iPad 2 in terms of white brightness, comes behind both iPads in black levels, and lands in between the two iPads in contrast ratio.
Of course, such high pixel density means that you won’t be able to see pixelation with the naked eye, and it’s obvious with the Rezound’s display. Watching an HD-quality video, as expected, is absolutely stunning; everything appears more life-like, and it’s easier to see finer details such as freckles and little hairs. Text turns out incredibly crisp, and it’s the most noticeable with smaller fonts; when viewing Engadget, for instance, tiny print appears just as smooth as it does when we zoom in. It’s a more satisfying visual experience than seen on the Vivid, which shows more and more jagged edges as the text gets smaller.
4.3-inch Super LCD. 1280×720 pixels with RGB sub-pixels. 342 ppi. The display is a tad big for my taste, but with these display specs I’m expecting nothing but an absolutely fantastic visual experience.
The future when it comes to pixel format is clear: It’s 1280×720. As display manufacturing technology advances expect 1280×720 to be packed into smaller and smaller displays. At some point 960×640 on the iPhone 4/4S will look anemic. The hardware spec will look anemic, not the visual experience. That will remain superb, just not has superb as time goes on and as more and more of the competition incorporates 1280×720. This difference will manifest itself most acutely when viewing 720p HD videos, which will be the next evolutionary step for Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, etc.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.