LG Display says it will invest 10 trillion won ($8.7 billion) to create a new manufacturing plant dedicated to producing Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) displays. The plant will be situated in Paju, South Korea and make displays ranging from large panels for TVs, all the way down to small, flexible panels for the likes of smartwatches and wearables.
Reuters reports that this large investment raises LG's high stakes bet upon OLED display technology. OLED technology offers a number of attractive qualities to device makers and consumers; OLED displays can be thinner and lighter as they don't require a backlight component to create their brightness, thus power efficiency is better, OLED offers enhanced viewing angles with consistent colour saturation and contrast, and images displayed on OLED can use absolute black as any pixel can be completely turned off (as used on my Nokia Lumia 820 glance screen).
Drawbacks of OLED panels are; they are more expensive and they can be susceptible to blue light deterioration. To counter the possibility of the blue pixel lifespan problems Samsung makes this coloured pixel twice the size of the other colours, and LG created the WRGB system with a 'brighter' display thanks to a fourth white sub-pixel. Hopefully the expense of these displays will be driven down with more manufacturing coming on board and more manufacturers using these displays.
Apple to switch to OLED displays
Bloomberg reports that share values of Japanese display makers Sharp and Japan Display have been impacted by stories of Apple's intent to switch to using OLED displays in its devices. Korean manufacturers LG Display and Samsung dominate the OLED display market.
In 2018 Apple's new devices will sport appealing OLED displays, according to the Nikkei. Whether Apple will focus on the equipping of OLED screens as one of its 'revolutionary' changes, as its iDevices move from one version to another, and how it will leverage the technology, remains to be seen. Apple already uses an OLED display on its relatively low volume Watch wearable.
