UTG market outlook source : UBI Research

At the ‘K-display 2022 Business Forum’ held at COEX from August 11th to 12th, CEO Il-jae Lee of Coses GT presented ‘Cover Window for Foldable and UTG Manufacturing Method’.

Regarding the foldable phone market, CEO Lee said, “According to UBI Research data, the size of the foldable market is expected to grow to 1 trillion won by 2025. Recently, not only Korea, but also China and the United States are actively engaged in foldable-related businesses. We are concentrating on securing competitiveness in UTG and hinge technology to catch up with Samsung Electronics such as Apple in the US and Huawei, Oppo and Honor in China.”

Next, explaining the characteristics of UTG products, “OCA and PET films are attached on the UTG products that are actually used and hard coating and anti-finger coating are made. If you do a pen-drop test on the 30um thick UTG of CosesGT, the panel breaks at 2.5cm. If PET film is applied over UTG, it can withstand up to 25cm in the pen-drop test, but the unique properties of UTG are greatly damaged. We are thinking about how to proceed with UTG alone without any special process on top of UTG.”

Regarding product mass production, “Actually, the Galaxy flip or fold-sized panel developed by CosesGT can be mass-produced with a thickness of 50 to 70um. Samples can be made with the same thickness as flip and fold for a 17-inch or larger medium-large panel such as a laptop, but considering mass production, it can be produced with a thickness of 70-100um.”

According to the announcement, the actual folding radius of the panel developed by CosesGT achieved a radius of 0.9R at 6.8 inches, 1.2R at 8.2 inches, and 4R at 17 inches. The folding test passed 170,000 times for 96 hours at 60°C and 170,000 times for 96 hours at -20°C, a total of 340,000 folding tests.

Finally, when asked about the most difficult aspect of UTG development by Chinese UTG processing companies, he said, “Recently, Chinese panel makers’ UTG demand is increasing, but Chinese processing makers have not yet entered the UTG business. The hinge technology of Chinese processors is also a problem, but the development of foldable phones is still being delayed because the proportion of foldable phones in the smartphone market is still small. Also, UTG processing companies in China seem to think that early UTG and glass are the same material and can be easily developed.”

CosesGT’s UTG for laptop/tablet

CosesGT exhibited UTG for 6.1-inch iPhone13 Pro and UTG for 13.3, 13.9, 15, and 17.8-inch notebooks/tablets at K-display 2022. Currently, CosesGT receives a glass ledger from NEG, a Japanese glass producer, and processes it, and samples are being evaluated by several companies.

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