The OLED-Info newsletter

Korea-based OLED materials maker Solus Advanced Materials (previously Doosan Solus) announced that the company will start supplying HTL materials for LG Display, for its E3 line in Paju, used to produce OLED TVs.

According to reports from Korea, up until now Merck was LGD's sole HTL supplier (for large-area WOLED production), and Solus will now replace some of the HTL materials previously supplied by Merck. Solus hopes to expand shipments to LGD and supply HTL materials for LGD's other large-area WOLED fabs.

Last year DSCC estimated that the foldable OLED market will grow to 94 million panels by 2025. DSCC now updated its forecasts, and lowered its estimates to 75.6 million units in 2025.

DSCC sees Apple starting to adopt foldable OLEDs in 2023, which will boost the total market and will lead to other companies adopting foldable displays. DSCC expects foldable and rollable panels to grow at an 87.5% CAGR from 2020 to 2025. Smartphones will dominate with a market share of over 92% during the entire forecast period.

OLED lighting developer OLEDWorks announced that was awarded with a new US federal SBIR grant to develop OLED technologies.

Under this new project, OLEDWorks will develop new OLED automotive taillights composed of multiple stacked layers of red and white OLEDs. This technology can also be applied to indoor lighting to provide greater efficiency, a broader intensity range, and the ability to communicate safety information.

The Honor 50 smartphone series include the Honor 50, Honor 50 Pro and the Honor 50SE. The top of the line Honor 50 Pro uses a 6.72-inch 120Hz 1236x2676 AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 778G chipset, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, two selfie cameras, a quad camera setup and 5G connectivity.

The Honor 50 features a 6.57-inch 1080x2340 120Hz AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 778G chipset, 8 GB of RAM, 128/256 GB of storage, a quad camera setup and 5G connectivity. The Honor 50 SE dials down the specifications and include a 6.78-inch LCD display.

The Honor 50 series will ship soon in China starting at around $425 for the Honor 50 and $575 for the Honor 50 Pro.

Inkjet system developer Notion Systems announced that investment company RSBG Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (RSBG AMT) is set to acquire 75.1% of Notion Systems.

RSBG competed against other interested parties, and it says Notion System has attractive growth prospects and a market-leading product range.

Market research company Omdia says that flexible OLED shipments in Q2 2021 reach 57 million units,a 54.1% increase over Q2 2020 (but a 35% drop compared to Q1 2021, due to seasonality and lower orders by Apple). Rigid OLED shipments will reach 53 million units in Q2 2021.

The leading flexible OLED maker is Samsung Display, which will ship 39.1 million flexible OLED panels in Q2 2021 (a 61.6% increase over Q1 2020). LG Display will ship 10.6 million units of flexible OLEDs, an increase of 55.9% over last year. The third largest producer, BOE, will ship 7.9 million units, a 31.9% drop from last year, as orders Huawei are shrinking.

In 2021, LG Display started shipping a new 83-inch 4K OLED TV panel, and LG Electronics is now shipping the 83-inch OLED C1 in the US and Korea. The 83-inch C1 is now shipping $5,999. The 48-inch C1 model costs $1,399.

The 2021 C1 OLED TV range features LG's 4th generation a9 AI processor, the company's latest webOS v6 and supports HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Atmos. For gamers, the TVs offer HDMI 2.1, G-SYNC, FreSync, VRR and ALLM.

Flexible OLED producer Royole announced a new development kit, called the Royole RoKit, an open platform for designers to develop products based on flexible electronics. The RoKit is now shipping in the US, Europe, Japan and China.

The RoKit includes a flexible OLED display (Cicada Wing foldable OLED), Royole's fully-flexible sensor module, an Android 10 motherboard that includes HDMI to MIPI, Wi-Fi, USB and more and more accessories