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Mobile

DSCC Q2 Smartphone Display Cost Report Updates iPhone Panels

July 7, 2020

The Q2 update of DSCC’s Quarterly Smartphone Display Cost Report includes the latest updates to our smartphone cost model, and a number of new models representing the ongoing evolution of the smartphone marketplace. New panel sizes introduced this quarter include three new flexible OLED models representing phones from Huawei, Oppo, and Samsung, plus revisions for the resolution of Apple’s 2020 iPhone product line, and four 120Hz smartphone panel models.
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TV

TV Sales Recovering from COVID-19 Slowdown, per Discien Report

July 7, 2020

Shipments of TVs have improved from their pandemic-induced Q1 swoon, and are showing particular strength in North America and China, according to the latest update of the Discien Monthly Global TV Shipment Report, available to subscribers through DSCC. The report covers shipments of the top 15 global brands: Samsung, LGE, TCL, Hisense, Sony, Skyworth, TPV (Philips), Sharp, Xiaomi, Vizio, Haier, Panasonic, Changhong, Konka and Toshiba.
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Mobile

The US May Have Already Lost the 5G Battle

June 29, 2020

5G is of course critical for the telecom, semiconductor, display, IOT and broadcasting markets as well as a host of services. However, one report indicates the US may have already lost the 5G battle. After reading their paper, it appears the US has been forced to choose the more expensive 5G standard (mmWave at 24-300GHz) with reduced coverage due to excessive government ownership of the sub-6 GHz spectrum. One study indicated it would cost telecom providers over $400B to adequately build out the mmWave infrastructure, so it will be limited to dense cities only. Thus, there is the possibility that in the US the only reason to buy a 5G phone would be if you live in one of those dense cities or you frequently travel overseas to a country where 5G has been more effectively deployed. The report was authored by the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) which is one of several independent federal advisory committees advising the Secretary of Defense. I will try and summarize the major points of their 33 -page white paper entitled The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and Opportunities for DoD in this article. Note, the paper was published in April 2019, but I suspect little has changed since then.
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TV

TV Panel Prices Increasing in Q3

June 29, 2020

The supply/demand situation in the display industry is more dynamic than ever amidst the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic impact. With some new information, we are updating our data and forecast for TV panel prices; we’re seeing prices slightly higher in June and expect a price increase in Q3, which will be welcome news for beleaguered panel makers.
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Events

SID/DSCC Business Conference Adds New Speakers

June 29, 2020

As we get closer to the event launch, we have a flurry of new speakers added to the agenda of the SID/DSCC Business Conference, the display industry’s premier event, to be held during DisplayWeek 2020 from August 3rd – 7th. That makes several announcements we made in a last few weeks out of date, so it’s important to update our readers on this exciting event.
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TV

DSCC TV Cost Report Provides Scorecard for LCD vs. OLED, China vs. Korea

June 29, 2020

DSCC has released its Q2 2020 update of our Advanced TV Display Cost Report, with updates to all of the OLED and LCD cost outlines plus several new product and manufacturing configurations, including 48”/77” MMG and 55”/65” MMG OLED in China, 55” and 65” 120Hz LCD, and six different 8K TV models in LCD and OLED.
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Mobile

Q2 OLED Supply/Demand Update – Oversupply in Phones to Persist to 2025

June 29, 2020

We have updated DSCC’s Quarterly OLED Supply/Demand and Capital Spending Report for Q2, with DSCC’s latest capacity outlook for the industry and our forecast for OLED panel demand. As we have reported for more than a year now, OLED for smartphones (technically, for Small & Medium applications) continues to have a substantial oversupply which is expected to persist for years. We have revised our outlook for OLED TVs on both the supply and demand sides, and we now expect a modest oversupply in 2020 with lower utilization, but resuming in 2021 we expect high utilization at OLED TV fabs.
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Coronavirus

COVID-19 Hits Rigid OLED Utilization

June 22, 2020

Samsung’s rigid OLED lines reached nearly 90% utilization for much of 2019, and were expected to continue that trend in 2020, but have been hit hard by the demand slowdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. While rigid OLED UTs are still higher than flexible UTs, they’ve taken a sharp reduction in Q2, according to the latest update to DSCC’s Quarterly OLED and Mobile LCD Fab Utilization Report released this week.
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OLED

OLED Panel Revenues Will Grow to $51 Billion by 2025

June 22, 2020

OLED panel revenues will increase by 14% in 2020 to $31.8 billion, and will grow to $51.2 billion by 2025, according to the latest update of the DSCC Quarterly OLED Shipment Report for Q2 2020, as OLED continues to take a larger share of smartphone and TV shipments. We described the historical results in this report last month, so this article will focus on DSCC’s updated forecast for OLED shipments extended out to 2025.
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