At the end of last month, BOE announced the official production of the 6th generation flexible OLED panel production line in Chengdu. This is the first 6-generation flexible OLED panel line in China that is the second in volume production in China, breaking the market challenge of Korean enterprises in flexible OLED panel market Of the monopoly.The BOE A shares also with the news once soared, the company's market capitalization once exceeded 200 billion mark.
With the launch of the iPhone X, more and more mobile phone, tablet, TV and other manufacturers began to switch from the traditional LCD screen into the arms of the OLED panel.According to research firm IHS Market predicts that this year, 36% of smart phones equipped with flexible OLED screen While the proportion will rise to 53% by 2020. Another Ubiresearch research report shows that in 2016 AMOLED panel sales increased by about 38%, while in 2020, this figure will rise to 49%, reaching 717 Hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.
Zhang Yu, vice president of BOE, revealed to the media that a total investment of 465 billion yuan will be put into mass production on the 6th generation of OLED chips of Chengdu Chengdu on October 26 with a planned production capacity of 48,000 pieces per month (1850mmX1500mm). However, public data shows that only Huawei, OPPO, Vivo monthly flagship shipments to more than 1 million units, due to limited production capacity, OLED display device market as a whole was in short supply situation.
Although the industry generally believes that driven by the demand of downstream terminals, OLED panels will show explosive growth in the next few years. In addition to the BOE, Huaxing, Tianma, and Hui Optoelectronics, Flextronics and Visionox have successively announced AMOLED production line started, but the Chinese forces in the field of OLED and did not expect optimism.
Foreign companies master the core technology
If the panel industry companies classified, then it can be divided into three categories: upstream, midstream and downstream.Among them, the upstream industry as the core material, the key equipment, glass substrate, midstream enterprise panel manufacturing, module assembly, downstream enterprises for mobile phones, Wearable, TV and other terminal manufacturers.
When it comes to OLEDs, I have to say that there are two major Korean companies, Samsung and LG.
OLED display technology and the traditional LCD display in different ways, without backlight, using a very thin coating of organic materials and glass substrates, when the current through these organic materials will be glowing. And the OLED display can be lighter and more Thinner, more visual angle, and can significantly save power.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics started making OLEDs in about 2000 and flexible OLEDs in 2005. With more than 10 years of manufacturing experience, Samsung Electronics occupies more than 90% market share in small-size OLED displays and occupies the dominant position.
OLED screen can actually be seen as numerous small red and green light bulb polymer, through the three color ratio changes in order to achieve different colors show.But red, green and blue three kinds of organic materials have different life expectancy, red , Blue sub-pixel life is much lower than the green sub-pixel, which resulted in the screen after a period of use, the overall picture was significantly green.
In order to solve this problem, Samsung has created a PenTile sub-pixel arrangement. In simple terms, the traditional RGB pixel arrangement requires that all sub-pixels have exactly the same area, shape and arrangement, except for the color (but the arrangement is also obvious) , All the sub-pixels look like each other copy.
However, the screens under the PenTile arrangement are easy to distinguish due to the arrangement. The most common situation is that the three colors of sub-pixels not only have different areas among each other, but also have different shapes and arrangement positions. Therefore, It looks like the entire pixel unit consists of RGB subpixels. In some special arrangements, the subpixels of a certain color may be circular, while the other two subpixels are large and narrow.
Although reducing the sub-pixel, sacrificing the accuracy of the display at the cost, but with the further increase in mobile phone resolution, PPI upgrade to make up for the accuracy of the problem, then in exchange for the screen life, power consumption advantages.
However, this theory is overwhelmed by the large size of the OLED screen, and the pure RGB OLED has to face the problem of high power consumption, low yield and the accuracy of the image, especially the problem of image precision. At present, the industry resolution is 4K and the display panel The size is getting bigger and bigger, subpixel loss will result in a significant decline in the display screen.
Large-size OLED screen has become the world of LG Display, by adding white pixels in the sub-pixel, to ensure the accuracy of the screen while also improving the overall picture brightness and contrast.
The WRGB approach has many advantages in achieving high color gamut and high resolution, such as the ability to compensate for blue through color-boosting techniques for high color gamut. Color-boosting also enables smaller pixels to be produced in large size And ultra-high-definition panel manufacturing process to demonstrate the advantages and can make the product in any viewing angle can show the same color.
In addition, LG Display's WRGB technology uses oxide-based TFTs rather than traditional LTPS TFT backplanes, since LG Display can partially convert existing LCD production lines for the production of oxide backplanes , The choice of oxide backplane also optimizes the OLED panel function in terms of light transmittance and color reproduction, etc. Finally, the overall cost of the screen is reduced and the yield is improved.
China's capital layout OLED long way to go
Zhang Yu, vice president of BOE, believes that the competitive landscape of the global panel industry will evolve into the 'two strong (China and South Korea) hegemony' contest from the current 'Three Kingdoms' (Korea, Japan, Mainland China, and Taiwan). Analyst Song Yu also said that the new global OLED display competition began to dominate the Chinese mainland gradually tilt.
Japanese companies first developed OLED, but decided to withdraw altogether. Now Japan Display (JDI), Sharp acquired after the acquisition by Foxconn resurfaced generation 6 OLED panel production line; while China Taiwan has been tracking OLED, but so far no bulk supply.
IHS predicts that in the ensuing years, South Korea will still be the country with the highest market share and the absolute leading market share, but China will have the fastest growth and investment. By 2020, China's OLED production capacity will occupy the global production capacity 28% or so, becoming the second pole of the global OLED supply.
OLED panel production line layout in Mainland China (Source: Orville cloud network and some corporate announcements finishing)
However, Yu Yuanwen Guoyuan Securities believes that the active participation of domestic manufacturers, but still in its infancy.China's major manufacturers of intermediates and monomers supply crude, sold to the patented enterprises.
At present, enterprises in mainland China need to focus on solving the embarrassment of the upstream core equipment and materials in the long run, especially in the evaporation equipment, in addition to rapidly crossing the two basic stages of capacity ramp-up and yield improvement. Materials, to a certain extent, restrict the development of the mainland OLED industry.
In addition, in the short term, because of the accession of Apple, points of thinning resources, and China's new supplier of production ramp up there is a process, so the global flexible OLED screen will be in short supply in recent years.
Li Yaqin, deputy general manager of Qunzhi Intelligence Group, said in an interview with the media that with the active layout of the 6th generation of OLED lines in mainland China, the long-term demand for small and medium-sized OLEDs will not be ruled out.