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The WAVE Report
Issue #0805------------------4/11/08 |
The WAVE Report archive is available on http://www.wave-report.com
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0805.1 FPD Market Status
0805.2 Samsung SDI
0805.3 Active Matrix OLED Emerges
0805.4 FPD Market Dynamics
0805.5 Digital Signage
0805.6 Multi-Touch Technology
0805.7 Synaptics
0805.8 ELO TouchSystems
0805.9 Immersion
0805.10 RPO
0805.11 Toshiba Matsushita
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0805 Display Search FPD 2008
By John Latta
San Diego, CA
March 11 – 13, 2008
DisplaySearch FPD 2008 follows 10 years of superb conferences. While many events that the WAVE attends struggle with quality content, that is, lack of speaker preparation and poor organization, DisplaySearch events are at the top in terms of content and quality. None of the events we attend on a regular basis provide so much presentation information. This is directly related to the quality of the market work at DisplaySearch and its CRO and Founder, Ross Young. DisplaySearch FPD 2008 met the high bar that we have come to expect placing it again in the rare position of a first class event.
0805.1 FPD Market Status
Ross Young, Chief Research Office and Founder, gave his customary state of the industry overview.
Since 1996 there has been huge growth of the displaysupply chain.
The display retail market has gone from $17B to $222B.
The overall supply chain began at $61B and now is at $780B.
The crystal cycle of investment, oversupply, price declines, shortages and reinvestment continues. For
the 6th time in 8 years prices have increased on a quarterly basis. In Q2 2007 prices rose for the first
time since 2003. In Q1 2008 prices are up 22% Y/Y.
2007 was a banner year in terms of profits. Due to careful control of inventory in Q1 2007, a drop in
capital spending and strong demand there was a shortage of products. This allowed for significant
profits. It is estimated that the industry had pre-tax profits of $10.6B.
In the large panel market the revenue growth was 38% and the highest since 2004. DisplaySearch estimates
that there will be >30% revenue growth in 2008 in spite of the recessionary concerns.
There was an important shift where small and medium panels were produced in 5th generation fabs, which
significantly increased the supply.Wal-Mart and the
On a worldwide basis Q3 was the first quarter where LCD TVs overtook CRTs. A watershed event which has
been predicted for some time.
OLED continue to have great promise. While OLEDs are superior to LCDs in many areas they remain constrained
by cost, capacity, size. lifetimes, differential aging and burn-in. It is interesting that AMOLEDs are
achieving a >60% premium in the mobile phone market and the Sony OLED TV has a 600% premium. The backplane
technology still remains an issue.
Wal-Mart and the clubs are having a major impact on the retail space. Both retailers captured market share
in 2007. This allowed Vizio to become a top3 TV brand in 2007.
Key expectations going forward include:
OLED is expected to grow 120%
Multi-Touch will be everywhere
The first flexible displays will come to market in 2008
16X9 panels will flood the notebook market
LED backlighting in notebooks will grow to >20% in 2009
0805.2 Samsung SDI
Ho Kyoon Chung, EVP, CTO Samsung SDI, gave an overview of its entry into OLED manufacturing and creating a new market.
In September 2007 Samsung SDI became the first company to mass produced AMOLED. Its capacity is 1.5M/month
based on 2.X” size panels.
It is claimed that in 9 months the same backplane yields have been achieve in LTPS that took 24 months
to accomplish in LCD.
OLED has a cost advantage over TFT-LCD with materials 40% less. This is due to the differences in Drive IC,
less POL, No C/F and no BLU.
The touch screen technology can be achieve directly within the panel with low material cost. This is an
optical solution and it is possible to do image scanning from the panel. The same technology of in-
cell optical imaging is applicable to LCD as OLED.
Samsung SDI has shown the largest OLED panel – 31” with full HD support.
The product roadmap has 14” and 21” displays in 2009 and 40” to 42” full HD displays in 2010.
There are many opportunities for OLED:
Paper sheet display
Bendable display
Flexible display
3-D display
Dual sided displays
Transparent displays
0805.3 Active Matrix OLED Emerges
The OLED market will exceed $1B in 2008. The fabrication uses small molecule materials with PM OLED rapidly declining. AM OLED is the focus of the industry. The Sony OLED television can be produced in several thousand units a month, it has had great press and a 600% premium still of interest to consumers. At present OLED is demonstrating that its unique technical capabilities enable it to collect a price premium.
Barry Young, DisplaySearch give an overview of the state of the OLED technology and market.
The market is starting to develop. It has the potential of reaching the $1B in 2008.
72m OLEDs were sold in 2006 and this rose to 74m in 2007.
This market is dominated by small area displays. Large area displays have not yet entered the market.
Samsung changed the OLED supply in Q4 2007 when it started to ship in quantity. These are being used in
cell phones and multimedia players.
Sony can ship several 1,000 OLED TVs a month with an estimated panel cost of $700. But in spite of the
small quantities this has generated enormous press about the potential of OLED as a consumer product.
GE has announced OLED lighting.
Polymer based OLED materials have faded with virtually all productions done on small molecule.
T.K. Hatwar, Eastman Kodak, presented the Kodak view of materials for large area OLED displays.
Kodak is focused on three areas:
White OLED materials and the associated color filtering
Flash Vapor Injection for laying down the material
Continuous OLED deposition.
It is claimed that the RGBW color OLED materials do not have differential aging.
The color filters developed by Kodak for use with white OLED expand the gamut, they claim 109% NTSC u,v
An analysis of a 32” OLED TV was done which showed the following:
41 watts
Lifetime – 180,231 hours
23.6 cd/A
It was cited that singlet materials cost $100/gram.
It was stated that Kodak is working with Samsung Electronics, not Samsung SDI.
Apparently Kodak has still not licensed its AMOLED technology.
0805.4 FPD Market Dynamics
Two of the major market segments for LCD panels are notebooks and monitors. Like the other segments of the industry these are undergoing significant changes. The DisplaySearch staff members which gave the market insights include: John Jacobs, Notebooks, and Chris Connery, Desktop. Interesting points made include.
Sales of Notebooks grew 27% in 2007 to 107m units.
Notebooks have become seasonal with 65% of the market in the Back-to-School period and the Black Friday (pre
Christmas) sales periods.
Notebooks have become a major consumer purchase item. The Back-to-School and Black Friday sales have show
Y/Y growth from 2005 to 2006 of 64% and from 2006 to 2007 of 64%.
The sales price of Notebooks as dropped on Black Friday 20% in 2006 from 2005 and another 10% on 2007
from 2006.
It is forecast that Notebook sales will slow as penetration reaches 50%. This is already happened in
Japan. The impact of this slowing is seen in the sales forecast which anticipates growth in 2008 declining to
27%. 21% in 2009 and down to 18% in 2010.
There is a continual drive to large display size. In 2007 the display size increased to 17” with the
display area of 100 sq in. This is anticipated to grow to 104 sq in by 2012 as wide formats become
mainstream.
Microsoft Vista’s slow adoption in the enterprise and the lack of consumer support for high PPI displays is
seen as the slow change toward higher resolution notebook panels. The most significant change has been
in the migration to wide form factor displays.
The driving factors in Notebooks includes these items.
Drive to LED backlights which lowers power consumption and gives better battery life.
Wireless in every notebook.
Declining ASPs which has accelerated adoption.
Increasing mobile performance with dual cores and more
In the monitor market the question was posed – is the demand going flat. However, the market data would
questions this premise. The 5 Y/Y growth rate has been 33%.
The worldwide market for monitors in 2007 was 183m units with 162m of those LCD based.
There is a major shift in demand for monitors. The NA growth is only 5% while in Latin America it is 103%,
China 49% and Asia Pacific 37%.
Wide form factors how have 49% of the market in Q4 2007.
The market forecast is for slowing growth.
2008 – 10%
2009 – 10%
2010 – 8%
2011 – 7%
2012 – 6%
The drivers which will support these growth rates are seen to be:
B2B purchases in the commercial markets
There were 2 important studies on productivity improvement from wide displays
done by NEC and Samsung/Dell.
Green IT initiatives
Vista adoption
Emerging markets
There is an emerging market segment which merges monitors with televisions. These are called MoniTV and
the increasing presence of 16:9 monitors support the potential of this market.
Another possible driver of increase monitors sales is the bundling with notebooks.
Areas not yet seen to have emerged are cameras integrated into monitors and the All-on-One PC
category.
The digital photo frames have created a market of their own. The products are going well beyond just the
display of images with DVB-T added along with Internet connectivity.
0805.5 Digital Signage
Chris Connery, DisplaySearch, gave a summary of Digital Signage.
There are a number of definitions of the market.
DisplaySearch uses 3 classifications:
Point of Decisions – Electronic paper displays, LCD
Point of Purchase – Medium size LCDs
Public Displays – Large area, LCD and PDP, rear projection displays and LED boards
The focus of the DisplaySearch market assessment is in large area public displays - => 32”.
The Digital Signage market is the blending of IT and AV. What is installed is not just a display but a
complete system be it analog or digital. Such installations included a PC, media players, content
management software, cabling, audio/video distribution amplifiers, network management and content creation.
Technical support is a very important part of the market.
In Q4 2007 318,787 displays were sold for Digital Signage applications. The market in 2007 was 1.1m
units. It is expected to reach 1.7m in 2008 and 2.5m units in 2009.
A significant element of the possible TAM is Digital Signage replacing printed signs –indoor only. This
could significantly enlarge the market.
0805.6 Multi-Touch Technology
Barry Young, DisplaySearch, led the session with his assessment of the technology and market.
The event which has changed the industry is the use of Apple’s Projective Capacitive technology in the
iPhone. This operates on the principle of a change in capacitance when a user places a finger near a node.
These nodes are established with ITO gridlines on the surface. The actual touch sensor is based on glass and
is only .7mm thick. There is a touch ASIC processor for noise reduction and sensing. The actual touch
panel module is done by TPX, Optrex, Sharp and Xaimen. It is estimated that the cost of Apple of the touch
screen is $54. The touch part cost more than the display. This is a stimulant to the panel companies to
aggressively pursue multitouch as a part of the panel.
There are a number of touch technologies: resistive, surface capacitive, surface acoustic & infrared. It is
estimated that resistive has 70% market share with SAW at 12% and surface capacitive at 11%.
Integrated touch panels currently have three approaches. In pixel optical, in pixel projective
capacitive and out of cell capacitive. Currently Sharp, Epson and Hitachi are developing or delivering
external capacitive. An integrated optical sensor is under development by AUO, LG Philips, Samsung, Sharp,
Sony, TMDisplay and TPO. Integrated products in H1 2008 are expected from AUO and Sharp.
TMDisplay is using a light guide approach on the side of the panel. TM – Toshiba and Matsushita.
The major challenge of the optical detection of touch is the determination of touch in an environment where
the ambient light changes significantly – such as in portable devices.
A projected capacitance implantation can be done at the cell level by modifying the color filter.
Cited as an example of the public appeal of touch is the CNN voting surface used on CNN news.
The market for touch products is estimated at $976m in 2007 and growing to $1.34B in 2009. Resistive having
nearly $900m of the 2009 market. The Y/Y CAGR of 14% is estimated.
The notion that capacitive has major inroads in to the market is false. The advantage of resistive is its
very low cost.
All of the touch market today is based on add-on units. This is all a potential additional market for
the panel makers if they can reduce cost and accomplish greater integration.
Key predictions made are:
Projective capacitive is expected to take market share form resistive as the market incorporates
more multiotouch in mobile devices.
Display makers are seeking to take over this market with in cell technologies.
New applications using very large displays are likely to adopt multitouch and push demand for
very large displays.
The DisplaySearch report on touch is due in May 2008 and will have a comprehensive top down assessment of
the touch market.
0805.7 Synaptics
Bob Mackey, Senior Scientist, made a case for its capacitive technology on mobile devices.
Its product is the ClearPad and ClearArray sensors. The ClearPad provides a full 2D transparent sensor. It
supports a full range of gestures.
The products will support entry level phones up to smart phones. The smart phone can use the ClearPad,
FlexPad and NavPoint products.
Capacitive sensing is easy, the hard part is determining the intent of the user.
Synaptics has been doing multitouch for years and now the OEMs are asking about it.
The company also provides capacitive ASIC designs. It is on its 7th generation of ASIC.
ClearPad implements the equivalent of touch pads – like keys. It is claimed that the ClearPad gesture
support is much richer that what can be done with resistive.
Synaptics supports circular motion with its ChiralMotion detection technology. This is like
winding through a long list with a scroll wheel. It allows for rapid on screen scrolling.
Detecting pointers is a hard problem – such as a stylist. This issue is that the pointer is typically
masked by the presence of the finger which distorts the capacitive area.
Apple does character detection based on lift – that is when the finger is raised not when it comes in
contact.
The company also has the ability to do list searching with fingerwriting.
0805.8 ELO TouchSystems
Henry Dsouza, provided an overview of touch technology.
The touch technologies include:
Analog resistive;
Digital Matrix Resistive
Bending Wave – Acoustic Pulse Recognition – APR
LCD in-cell
Optical Waveguide
Projective Capacitive - Apple
The various technologies were assessed in terms of durability, optical clarity, power, stylist
independence, mechanical, vendor support and cost.
It was stressed to carefully consider each of the technologies and their pro and con.
0805.9 Immersion
Michael Levin, VP, made a case that the consumer experience with touch was significantly improved with haptic feedback.
With force feed back human computer interactions are up to 40% faster, according to a study reported on in
2000.
A 2007 study showed that on mobile devices that users are 20% more accurate and 20% faster when screens are
haptic enabled.
0805.10 RPO
Ian Maxwell, VP Business Development, described its Digital Waveguide Touch (DWT) technology.
The advantage of DWT is that it has high precision and accuracy with high resolution. It can do double touch
and has no ITO overlays. DWT supports both a finer and pen. The system is based on breaking lightwaves. A
lithography process is used to make the waveguides. The panel operates at 100 dpi.
A major disadvantage of projective capacitive touch, such as used in the iPhone, is the very high cost,
finger touch only and EMI issues.
There are two types of resistive touch technologies.
FOG – Film on Glass
GOG – Glass on Glass
DTW uses LED illumination on the side and imaging detection on the opposite sides, which is actually a
camera. Illumination of the DTW is fed to the panel surface using a polymer waveguide. The waveguides are
proprietary with RPO.
There is a pilot line for 259k waveguide sets/month and a high volume manufacturing plane has been
designed.
A comparison was provided of various touch technologies including N-Trig, Neonode, Integrated LCD
and APR.
Although this technology is targeted to small to medium sized displays it is implied it could be
applied to larger displays.
It is claimed that DWT is superior to traditional IR touch in the following ways:
Works in full sunlight
Bezel width is only 2mm and can go to .7mm
It is claimed that the cost is much lower than other touch technologies.
It works with any type of flat panel display.
All components are available “off-the-shelf”
Initial markets are from 3” to 7”and larger sizes to follow.
The company will sample single and double touch evaluation kits at SID 2008, May.
0805.11 Toshiba Matsushita
Steve Vrablik, Development Director, described its integrated touch panel technology.
Toshiba has System on Glass technology which would enable a complete “sheet display.” This would
integrate the display and input device. System ICs and drives would also be put on the glass surface.
It is claimed that with LTPS that both circuit integration and the photo sensor is possible on the
glass substrate. A sensor ASIC would be used to capture the finger image.
Using an in-panel imaging sensor it is possible to use the detection over a wide range of ambient lights –
from 10 to 10,000 lux.
It was found that a single sensitivity sensor per cell does not work well in high ambient conditions. What
was found over a period of years, was that the sensitivity of the sensors vary across the cells in
the array.
FSSM – Finger sensor sensing mode
FSRM – Finger sensor reflection mode
The algorithms for this are quite complex and still a work in progress.
An ASIC is part of the design which does touch area detection and touch timing detection.
Prototypes have been assembled on 3.5”. 2.8” and 2.4” panels. The 3.5” panel also supports pen input. An
example was shown with Japanese characters being written.
Toshiba touts its ability to scan images from the surface of the display. This can be done in color. The
same scanning function is used to detect pen input. The scanning will work on large panels, in part
because the backplane is LTPS. It is possible to do finger print detection with the scanning.
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