Perhaps the biggest news on the mobile display front to come out of IFA this year was the stunning announcement that Samsung will ship an OLED laptop next year. Kyu Uhm, Head of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Samsung’s Computing Division told a group at IFA last Friday that his group had been waiting for commercial availability of the OLED panels from its sister division Samsung SDI before making the announcement. "Samsung is the largest OLED screen manufacturer and as soon as it’s available commercially for laptops we will adopt it," he said. After a hushed word from a colleague he added the reveal: "Probably sometime Q3 next year," a report by Dan Grabham in techradar.com said.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

Samsung is leading the OLED march in small handheld displays but manufacturing issues resulting in low yields and a high cost differential with entrenched LCDs have delayed the move to larger sized notebook, monitor and TV panels. Not just that, LCD technology is a moving target, that continually reinvents itself most recently with edge lit, high-bright LED panels pushing the thinness envelope to rival OLEDs.

Readers of Mobile Display Report learned last month that Samsung’s OLED strategy is working as AMOLED shipments in July-09 reached the 2M units milestone for its 3-inch class displays, doubling what it shipped just last April. Samsung Mobile Displays (SMD), which includes the OLED operation, was quick to note that when the 2-inch-class AMOLEDs are added to the count and the shipment period is extended to August, that number swells to 4M units.

We reported in May-09 that Samsung is banking heavily on OLED technology as the display future of its mobile products. According to SMD VP Woo Jong Lee, who spoke in April at Finetech Japan-09, AMOLED displays would be used in high-end notebooks in the future enabling superb displays on notebook PCs that will be even thinner than the thinnest today. This prediction is particularly important for OLED panel makers, because notebook demand will add stability and allow them to diversify product applications.

On the handheld front, the company expects the technology to capture more than 35% of the market by 2015, Lee said OLED devices comprise just 2.3% of the market this year, but this share will grow to 37.5% - and that’s just cell phones.

So far it’s been a rocky road in transitioning OLED technology from small display panels to larger notebook, monitor and TV sizes. In mid August, Sony announced it was delaying the upgrade to its 2007 release, the 11-inch (XEL-1) OLED-TV, due to production yields that only reached 60% for the new display technology. But on the flip side, Korean rival LG is reportedly on the cusp of announcing its 15-inch OLED display with Ross Miller of Engadget reporting the new model will be on sale in Korea this November, and available world-wide in 2010. There are also some cool pictures showing up on LG’S flickr.com web site.

One thing is for sure, if OLED technology is to have its day, it must make the transition to high yield large panel production. While the signals are a bit mixed, it looks like the Koreans may be next to make a (relatively) large commercial product available for consumers. Then, we’ll see. - Steve Sechrist