Apple partner LG Display invests $650M in OLED screens
LG Display, a major provider of screens to Apple, has announced plans to invest more than $650 million in OLED technology.
LG plans to produce large-panel organic light emitting diode displays at its existing plant in Paju, South Korea, investing 706 billion won, or $656.7 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. LG plans to produce the OLED screens for high-definition television sets by the end of June 2014.
The first OLED TV from LG Electronics costs $10,000.
The major investment by LG will allow the company produce 26,000 sheets per month large enough to result in six 55-inch screens each.
LG Display is a major supplier to Apple, which has increasingly turned to the company as it looks to move its supply chain away from rival Samsung. The company is said to have landed the most orders for Apple's latest products, including the iPad mini, fourth-generation iPad, 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, and redesigned iMacs.
Monday's news is even more noteworthy because it was revealed earlier this month that Apple had courted an OLED expert away from LG Display. OLED panels promise thinner designs and better battery life, but Apple has not adopted the new screen technology for any of its devices.
That hasn't stopped rumors that have persisted for years that Apple could switch to OLED panels for its future devices. Currently, Apple prefers LCD panels with in-plane switching technology, allowing for wide viewing angles.
Apple CEO Tim Cook even panned OLED last week at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, suggesting the color accuracy is poor. Samsung utilizes OLED panels for its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone.
But Apple has also shown interest in improving OLED technology for its own use. Numerous patent filings by the company over the years specifically mention OLED displays on devices like iPhones.
LG's announced OLED plans are HDTV-specific, which could also tie into rumors of an Apple-built television set. The company has been rumored to build a full-fledged HDTV for years, and Cook even hinted late last year that Apple has big plans for the living room.
However, OLED panels remain extremely costly in large form factors. For example, LG Electronics, a major shareholder in LG Display, launched a 55-inch OLED TV in January starting at $10,000.
LG plans to produce large-panel organic light emitting diode displays at its existing plant in Paju, South Korea, investing 706 billion won, or $656.7 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. LG plans to produce the OLED screens for high-definition television sets by the end of June 2014.
The first OLED TV from LG Electronics costs $10,000.
The major investment by LG will allow the company produce 26,000 sheets per month large enough to result in six 55-inch screens each.
LG Display is a major supplier to Apple, which has increasingly turned to the company as it looks to move its supply chain away from rival Samsung. The company is said to have landed the most orders for Apple's latest products, including the iPad mini, fourth-generation iPad, 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, and redesigned iMacs.
Monday's news is even more noteworthy because it was revealed earlier this month that Apple had courted an OLED expert away from LG Display. OLED panels promise thinner designs and better battery life, but Apple has not adopted the new screen technology for any of its devices.
That hasn't stopped rumors that have persisted for years that Apple could switch to OLED panels for its future devices. Currently, Apple prefers LCD panels with in-plane switching technology, allowing for wide viewing angles.
Apple CEO Tim Cook even panned OLED last week at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, suggesting the color accuracy is poor. Samsung utilizes OLED panels for its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone.
But Apple has also shown interest in improving OLED technology for its own use. Numerous patent filings by the company over the years specifically mention OLED displays on devices like iPhones.
LG's announced OLED plans are HDTV-specific, which could also tie into rumors of an Apple-built television set. The company has been rumored to build a full-fledged HDTV for years, and Cook even hinted late last year that Apple has big plans for the living room.
However, OLED panels remain extremely costly in large form factors. For example, LG Electronics, a major shareholder in LG Display, launched a 55-inch OLED TV in January starting at $10,000.
Comments
Read an interesting article in Forbes this morning...what if all this talk about an "iWatch" is actually about a TV and not a wristwatch? As in "iWatch TV"? Could all this wristwatch stuff be a smokescreen?
Article: LG Display, a major provider of screens to Apple, has announced [B]plans[/B] to invest more than $650 million in OLED technology.
'Nuff said
Edit:
On a second reading, it seems that there is actually[I] no reason at all to believe that the OLED screens are headed for Apple products[/I], despite the strong implication in the article that they are.
Which was exactly my point in the first response to this article.
LG is spending money on OLED.
LG supplies some screens to Apple.
There is absolutely nothing in those two facts which lead one to believe that Apple is planning OLED in any products. I believe the matter is simple. If and when OLED offers quality and performance that offers any advantage to iDevices, Apple will incorporate it. So far, there's no real reason to switch to OLED, so the LG investment is presumably for other customers' benefit.
There is a non-zero probability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
This doesn't make a lot of sense given that Apple's recent patents on OLED technology deal with power and brightness issues only. They would have had to come up with some miraculous technology to make the colours more accurate or the whole thing makes no sense at all.
Edit:
On a second reading, it seems that there is actually no reason at all to believe that the OLED screens are headed for Apple products, despite the strong implication in the article that they are.
You and Tim both suffer from the same misunderstanding about the colour accuracy of OLED panels. They are not intrinsically inferior to other technologies, they are actually potentially superior, being generally capable of reproducing a wider colour gamut than LCDs. Dell have some wide gamut special panels for laptops with a gamut of 92% of NTSC color space with a contrast ratio of 1000:1. Samsung's OLED Tv on the other hand has a colour gamut of 107% of NTSC and a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.
The actual problem is that most people have only seen OLED panels in phones, and the manufacturers of the phones have chosen to adjust the colour balance in a way that exaggerates colour saturation. This isn't a fault of the tech, but of the implementation. I have an Olympus camera with an OLED panel on the back. It is not adjusted to give the over saturation present in my Samsung phone. I believe the panel in the camera is also made by Samsung. The result is the panel in the camera delivers a stunning image quality, which surpasses that of the screen on my Macbook Pro Retina.
The argument of colour inaccuracy in OLED panels is as bogus as if one were to claim the tech behind LCD TV panels is overly bright and vivd, basing such a judgement on how they appear in most stores, when it is common practice of most stores to set display sets to a vivid setting.
Maybe Tim is pulling a Jobsian RDF - diss a product/technology to divert attention and ... BOOM - release a product with previously dismissed technology a year later.
Yes, I'm sure you know more about the screens used in portable devices than all the experts at Apple (Cook was undoubtedly relying on what he has been told by their experts).
Originally Posted by stelligent
Maybe Tim is pulling a Jobsian RDF - diss a product/technology to divert attention and ... BOOM - release a product with previously dismissed technology a year later.
Apple has been dismissing OLED since it first came out, though, yeah? Better to ignore it and move on to the next tech.
"Apple partner LG Display"
It is a slightly weird world where tech leaders like LG need to be a supplier rather than seller.
Yet wise buyers choose Samsung when buying the Retina Macbook Pro.
Seeing a it of ghosting? Well that is the LG one.
Still, LG can shift a stash of OLEDs simply by becoming 'supplier only' and its certainly good for the short term balance sheet.
It's a no brainer. OLED is much thinner, bendable, on average consumes less power, produces absolute blacks and wider saturation gamut. Cook knows that. The only reason he "panned OLED": cause Apple currently has no access to reasonably large supplies of OLED, so Cook makes excuses.
That being said I'm sure Apple has kept its eye on OLED tech but there Reuther factors at work here that discount their immediate use. For one thing the word organic in the name of these screens means that they degrade significantly over time. There are all sorts of possibilities here but I'm not convinced that Apple is going the OLED route for big screens. Now for iWatch that would be an entirely different story. OLED technology has a lot of potential for a watch type device.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
You and Tim both suffer from the same misunderstanding about the colour accuracy of OLED panels. They are not intrinsically inferior to other technologies, they are actually potentially superior, being generally capable of reproducing a wider colour gamut than LCDs. Dell have some wide gamut special panels for laptops with a gamut of 92% of NTSC color space with a contrast ratio of 1000:1. Samsung's OLED Tv on the other hand has a colour gamut of 107% of NTSC and a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.
The actual problem is that most people have only seen OLED panels in phones, and the manufacturers of the phones have chosen to adjust the colour balance in a way that exaggerates colour saturation. This isn't a fault of the tech, but of the implementation. I have an Olympus camera with an OLED panel on the back. It is not adjusted to give the over saturation present in my Samsung phone. I believe the panel in the camera is also made by Samsung. The result is the panel in the camera delivers a stunning image quality, which surpasses that of the screen on my Macbook Pro Retina.
The argument of colour inaccuracy in OLED panels is as bogus as if one were to claim the tech behind LCD TV panels is overly bright and vivd, basing such a judgement on how they appear in most stores, when it is common practice of most stores to set display sets to a vivid setting.
You're white-washing a bit yourself here.
Whether through implementation details, or through ineptitude, it is definitely a fact that most OLED panels for sale (both TV's and phones) have rather poor colour reproduction and in general, produce over-saturated imagery. You would have us believe that these TV sets and phones are just "poorly tuned," when this isn't really the case.
Pen-tile implementations of OLED panels for instance (widely used and sold), cannot give colour accurate results by default, they just aren't designed in a way that they could. I don't think it's credible of you to suggest that their notorious over-saturation is down to tuning or adjustment in all, or even most cases.
My assertion wasn't that OLED *couldn't* ever give accurate colour results, merely that they don't currently do so in most cases.
I think it rather likely that if Apple makes a TV set, that they will use OLED due to economic concerns alone. My suggestion was only that before this happens, we will likely see some sort of Apple-esque way of ensuring proper colour reproduction from the current panels, or an Apple-esque twist on the production methods of the panels for the same reason.
What Are you still here?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
You're white-washing a bit yourself here.
Whether through implementation details, or through ineptitude, it is definitely a fact that most OLED panels for sale (both TV's and phones) have rather poor colour reproduction and in general, produce over-saturated imagery. You would have us believe that these TV sets and phones are just "poorly tuned," when this isn't really the case.
Pen-tile implementations of OLED panels for instance (widely used and sold), cannot give colour accurate results by default, they just aren't designed in a way that they could. I don't think it's credible of you to suggest that their notorious over-saturation is down to tuning or adjustment in all, or even most cases.
My assertion wasn't that OLED *couldn't* ever give accurate colour results, merely that they don't currently do so in most cases.
I think it rather likely that if Apple makes a TV set, that they will use OLED due to economic concerns alone. My suggestion was only that before this happens, we will likely see some sort of Apple-esque way of ensuring proper colour reproduction from the current panels, or an Apple-esque twist on the production methods of the panels for the same reason.
Ahhem...
Quote:
We're used to seeing high-end TVs costing several thousand pounds, but it's not often we get to take a look at the reference monitors used to produce the films and TV programs we watch at home. When Sony showed off its TriMaster BVM-E250 reference monitor to us on a recent trip to Tokyo, we were rightly blown away by its image quality.
Unlike a TV, which processes the image before displaying it on-screen, a reference monitor displays exactly what data is recorded in the input image. Sony's latest models use OLED, rather than the CRT and LED sets previously used by the television industry, for more accurate colour and black levels than ever before.
The problem, as I said, isn't intrinsic to the OLED technology, but rather the way it is implemented. Samsung is lazy and is doing it's customers a disservice by not calibrating the OLED screens in their phones. What they should do is provide a control panel feature that woud allow interested users to calibrate the screens themselves. The OLED screens Samsung produces have a wider colour gamut than the IPS screens Apple uses. This ought to provide them with an advantage because a wider gamut implies an ability to display a larger number of colours, therefore achieving greater colour fidelity. But Samsung's less than optimal implementation squanders the potential advantage, so win to Apple, but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the tech.
People really prefer to see their phones, so saturated is fine when needed.
That's ridiculous. Apple has the money to buy anything they want. If there are enough OLED screens for TVs and Android phones, Apple could easily get them instead.