OLED Will Defeat LCD—‘Only Question Is When,’ Says Ex-Samsung OLED Point Man
SAN JOSE -- A Display Week Business Conference workshop Monday billed as a panel on whether LCD TV technology can “persevere” instead became a gentlemanly but blunt debate about whether OLED can beat LCD as the industry's preeminent display technology.
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Corning thinks LCD will persevere “because it keeps getting better,” said Robert O’Brien, its director-market intelligence and strongest advocate on the viability of LCD glass. He cited Corning’s introduction Monday of Lotus NXT glass as an example of new technologies that will protect LCD’s standing as the “dominant technology in displays for very, very many years.” Lotus NXT glass promotes lower total pitch variation so LCD TV panel makers can achieve higher pixel counts, better energy efficiency and higher yields, O’Brien said.
O’Brien’s sparring opponent, Ho Kyoon Chung, an engineering professor from South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University who a decade ago as chief technology officer of Samsung SDI led Samsung’s development of active-matrix OLED, described himself as one of OLED’s most passionate global defenders. In the battle of mismatched market opponents, LCD is the Goliath that’s backed by a “heavily equipped” infrastructure, while OLED is the David armed only with “stones and sticks,” Chung said. But Chung has no doubt the display industry “has got to go to” OLED, and “the only question is when,” he said.
The world is fast moving into “flexible” displays for everything from curved TVs to smartphones to smart watches and other wearable and mobile devices, Chung said: “OLED is the best technology for flexible displays.” Using OLED’s flexibility, “roll-up and roll-down TVs eventually will come,” Chung said. “At that point, LCD will be done.”
Though OLED has gained widespread adoption in mobile applications, OLED TV’s progress in winning adoption in large screens has been “a little troubling,” Chung conceded. Its struggles have proved that technology not only needs “to have the right price,” but also the importance of market drivers to push the technology forward. He delicately chided his alma mater Samsung, though a powerhouse in using OLEDs for mobile devices, for “not driving” the business in large-screen OLED TVs, leaving LG to be “fighting a lonely battle.” Samsung representatives didn’t comment.
Eventually, OLED will win out over LCD because of its “simplicity of modular assembly,” including no backlights, Chung said. OLED also exceeds LCD in terms of performance attributes such as contrast ratios and viewing angles, he said.
O’Brien retorted that OLED came to market 10 years ago promising superior color and contrast performance, better viewing angles and thinner form factors than LCDs. Over the years, LCD has improved so that “in every place, those advantages have diminished and diminished, so those advantages aren’t there anymore,” O’Brien said.
“Even in flexible, conformable applications, there’s a future for glass as well,” O’Brien said. Corning has been working with its customers “for a few years now” on devising “thinner and thinner” glass conducive for “roll-to-roll” display applications, he said. “We can do it in the glass space,” he said, though it’s “not without substantial challenges.” Flexible glass in roll-to-roll applications is “several years away,” he said in Q&A. But when it's ready for commercialization, it will have fulfilled the “promise to be affordable” and take advantage of “the inherent strengths of glass in its thermal characteristics,” he said. “We’re hopeful in the long term, that’s the direction the industry can go.”
With 4K resolution migrating from TV to all sorts of display devices, IHS predicts 4K panels as a market will be worth $52 billion globally in 2020, said David Hsieh, IHS senior director-display. If that happens, 4K panels will be 35 percent of the total display industry, Hsieh said. Historically, the increase in LCD TV area growth has helped absorb excess capacity in the panel industry, he said. IHS estimates the average screen size of LCD TV panels that shipped in 2007 was 31 inches, he said. By 2017, IHS forecasts average LCD TV screen sizes will grow to 41 inches, or about one inch per year over the decade, he said. It’s questionable whether the migration to larger screen sizes will be sustainable as a way to absorb panel industry capacity, he said, because average screen sizes may perennially grow larger, but average living room sizes won’t.