According to the market track for the second quarter of 2020 published by UBI Research, the total OLED shipments in the second quarter were 107 million units, down 13.4% (QoQ) from 124 million units in the last quarter. In addition, it decreased by 16.6% (YoY) compared to the 122 million units in the second quarter of 2019. This is because sales of OLED set devices decreased due to the aftermath of COVID-19.

On 21 July, information leaker for IT new product, Ishan Agarwal, released an image presumed to be a rendered photo of ‘Galaxy Z Fold2’ on his Twitter.

On June 18, 2020, Jiangsu Lemeng Precision Science and Technology Co., Ltd. (江苏乐萌精密科技有限公司, hereinafter Jiangsu Lemeng) invested 200 million yuan to sign a project contract to confirm the OLED metal mask. It was held in the state-of-the-art new district of Changzhou, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province.

The touch panel technology installed on a mobile phone is an important element technology that performs a user interface function. Touch technology is changed from an add-on type to an on-cell type in flexible OLED displays.

According to UBI Research’s report on changes in the OLED market caused by coronavirus, the forecast for the 2020 OLED modification market is $ 36.7 billion in sales and 612 million units. This is a decrease of 4.8% and 7.6%, respectively, from the expected sales of $ 38.5 billion and shipments of 6.6 million units at the beginning of the year.

UBI Research(www.ubiresearch.com), a company specializing in OLED market research, predicted that the market for OLED emitting materials for 2020 will rapidly grow to $ 1.9 billion.
According to the OLED emitting material market track published by UBI Research every quarter, the emitting material market in 2019 was $ 1.304 billion, up 39.2% from 2018’s $ 0.937 billion market.

Dark clouds are approaching Korean industry by the corona virus that has been blown since the beginning of the year. Wuhan, the birthplace of the corona virus, is badly affecting the Chinese display industry because it is a key place where Chinese display makers are building large production bases.

Japan Display (JDI) announced on the Jan. 31st that they have signed a final contract to receive investment of up to 108 billion yen (980 million dollar) from Ichigo Asset Management. Therefore, the company is expected to release its debts and invest in new fields such as fingerprint sensors. However, it has yet to be determined whether JDI will invest in OLED for Smartphones.

According to UBI Research’s 4th quarter OLED display market track, rigid OLED is still the main product in the OLED market for smartphones, with 79.2% of the total OLED market in 2019. As a result of counting and analyzing shipments up to the third quarter of 2019, rigid OLED accounted for 237 million units of the total shipment of 338 million units.

In October 2018, Samsung Display received a lot of attention by supplying OLED for side mirror replacement to e-Tron of Audi, a global automaker. e-Tron has a camera installed in the side of the existing side mirror, and the driver can check the surroundings through the OLED installed in the vehicle.

Recently, due to the trade dispute between the US and China, a large portion of the budget planned by the Chinese government is flowing into the display industry while the semiconductor industry, which is one of intensive investment promotion industries, foreshadows difficulties. In the display industry, the focus is on OLED, which is a cutting-edge technology, and most of the investment is in the 6G line, a mobile product production line. This year has already been made at Visionox and Tianma on the 6G line, and BOE and CSOT will be invested further this year.

Japan, which used to be the strongest country in display industry in the past, gradually declined through the era of CRT, PDP and LCD, and has fallen to the third-largest producer in OLED industry after China.

According to the 3Q AMOLED Market Track issued by UBI Research, the second quarter OLED market was sluggish, affected by the lower utilization rate of Samsung Display. However, in the third quarter, the market rebounded rapidly, forming a market of US$ 8.3 billion.

Japan Electronics Show, CEATEC2018, was held at Makuhari Messe last week. CEATEC JAPAN 2018 is a global showcase for Japan’s growth strategies and vision of the future. Various Japanese companies exhibited products centered on IoT robots and AI. It is recognized that the electronics industry in Japan is gradually shifting from large hardware to small advanced parts and software industries.

The display of connected cars is getting bigger and bigger to for the convenience of providing various information. The displays used in general vehicles include the cluster, CID (center information display), RSE (rear seat entertainment), and RMD (room mirror display).

Attentions are growing for the foldable smartphone since it can provide a wider screen and higher resolution than the display of conventional smartphones, while maintaining the portability of the smartphone. The foldable smartphone is a smartphone when folded, and it becomes a tablet PC when it is unfolded. Following Samsung Electronics, Huawei is also aiming to launch a smartphone with a foldable display this year.