Last week, LG Display announced plans to invest 1.26 trillion won (around £680 million) on improving and expanding its next-generation OLED display technology, and now we have fresh information on exactly where that money will be spent.
The company itself said very little about what it intends to do with the cash, but reports from Korean media and industry analysts this week have shed more light on its plans, which call for its current 4-stack Primary RGB Tandem OLED technology to be expanded to additional devices.
According to Business Korea, the company will use some of the money to expand its production facilities at its factory in Paju to manufacture small- and medium-sized Primary RGB Tandem OLED panels for devices such as smartphones and laptops. Currently, the tech is exclusively focused on large-sized panels for televisions.
But that’s not all the money will be used for, because a report from UBI Research says a big chunk of it will go into fueling its research and development efforts. It said the company wants to implement upgrades such as LTPO 3.0 technology, which supports dynamic frame rate switching on the AMOLED displays used in smartphones. In addition, it will also seek to enhance its “Colour on Encapulation” technology implementation in its RGB 2-stack Tandem OLED displays.
UBI Research added new 4-stack Primary RGB Tandem OLED production lines for smaller displays will also be built at the company’s factories in Vietnam, where the funds will also go towards improving module process efficiency and automation.
An article in FlatpanelsHD said the LTPO 3 technology is likely to improve the power efficiency of smartphones and other gadgets, such as smart watches and will enable variable refresh rates and fast-switching with higher resolutions. Meanwhile, COE helps to boost the luminance and improve power efficiency while making the OLED panels thinner. It does this by integrating the colour filters into the encapsulation layer, allowing for the top polarising layer to be removed, which means one less layer in the overall stack.
A spokesperson for LG Display told UBI Research that the investment is not only about expanding production of its 4-Layer Primary RGB Tandem OLED tech, but also a “strategic move to shift towards high-value OLED products.”
UBI Research added that the funding is a direct result of the 2.2 trillion won sale of LG Display’s last remaining LCD display manufacturing plant in Guangzhou, China, to TCL CSOT.
