Royole's 3D virtual mobile theater and bendable FlexPhone displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the US, in January (Photo/Courtesy of Royole Corporation)
Start-up CEO sees new possibilities for PCs and VR devices
The world's smartphone landscape is expanding at a rapid pace, and so is the display technology used in such gizmos.
The emerging flexible active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) on high-end phones enables screens to bend and curve, while featuring a more efficient display than the liquid crystal display (LCD) mostly found in TVs.
Still, thriving in a market dominated by South Korean electronics company Samsung is bound to be challenging, which is becoming more apparent with the emergence of Chinese players.
It is reported recently that Chinese rising start-up Royole Corporation plans to start a mass production of the quasi-6th generation flexible AMOLED panel by the end of this year in a 1.1-million-square-feet flexible display production campus at the Longgang district of Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province.
A 6th generation production line is expected to make over 200 cuts of a 5.5-inch product from a single substrate, which is about four times the production efficiency of a conventional 4.5th generation line.
The production line in Longgang will mainly focus on small and medium-sized flexible screens for consumer electronics such as smartphones, smart watches, smart home appliance, and automobile application, Royole founder Liu Zihong told the Global Times Tuesday.
The Shenzhen-based company has invested more than 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) in building up the plant, with the annual output expected to reach up to 20 billion yuan.
Founded in 2012 by Liu, a Stanford University graduate, Royole has been working hard to break new ground in display technologies and new methods of human-machine interface.
In July 2014, the company made headlines around the world by demonstrating the world's thinnest full-color flexible display that can be rolled and bent. At about 0.01 millimeters, or less than one-fifth the diameter of a human hair, the display is as thin as onion skin.
Potential demand
"As more and more consumer electronics manufacturers use flexible display technology to design electronic devices, the flexible AMOLED display panels are in great demand and have become an industry trend," Liu said.
According to a report issued by London-based market consultancy IHS Markit last December, smartphone makers used 76 percent of the total flexible display supply in 2016.
While Chinese phone makers Vivo and Xiaomi both launched their first smartphones with flexible AMOLED displays last year, many others are mulling over plans to curve their phones.
U.S. smartphone icon Apple Inc will reportedly launch the next generation of its iPhone in the third quarter of this year, featuring curved AMOLED display.
"If Apple does so, the demand for flexible AMOLED displays will be dramatically driven up. The whole display panel industry will switch to embrace flexible AMOLED technology," Wang Yanhui, head of Shanghai-based Mobile China Alliance, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Shipments of flexible displays are expected to surge by 135 percent from 2016 to reach 139 million units in 2017, accounting for 20 percent of the total OLED display unit shipments over the year, the IHS report showed.
Curved display is now widely used in smartphones, but other massive possibilities also exist in areas such as PCs, automotive monitors, TVs, fashion and virtual reality (VR) devices, according to Royole's Liu.
Jerry Kang, an analyst with IHS, predicted in the report that the flexible display for those new applications is not expected to be significant until 2023.
Still, Royole appears to be trying to make an early start. In 2015 and 2016, respectively, the company launched VR headsets Royole-X and Royole Moon, which are promoted as foldable 3D virtual mobile theaters with 800-inch curved screens.
Growing rivalry
The flexible display market is booming and Royole is not the only one that has seen the trend.
Last November, BOE Technology, a Chinese veteran in producing semiconductor display panels, announced an investment of 46.5 billion yuan in building a 6th generation flexible AMOLED production line in Mianyang, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, according to its stock filing posted on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
Another production line it built in 2015 in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, will reportedly go into operation this year with a monthly production of nearly 50,000 units. Shenzhen-based China Star Optoelectronics Technology is among the latest to join the fray. The company announced in March 2017 it would invest 35 billion yuan in the construction of a 6th generation flexible AMOLED plant in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, planning to make 45,000 units per month from the first half of 2020, according to information on its official website.
Meanwhile, display technology forerunners in South Korea are also beefing up their flexible display production capacity. For instance, LG Display is scheduled to start the mass production of flexible AMOLED displays using a 6th generation production line at Gumi plant in Gyeongbuk Province, South Korea, in the first half of this year.
South Korea's business portal businesskorea.co.kr reported in June 2016 that Samsung, the market leader, pledged a total of 5 trillion won ($4.43 billion) of new investment in flexible AMOLED displays by the end of 2017. "It's not technological breakthroughs, but the production capability that determines whether a flexible display producer can lead the market," said Wang.
He predicted that Samsung would continue wearing the crown in the foreseeable future, thanks to its earlier entrance, but the challenges from Chinese firms are looming.
Wang's opinion is reflected to some extent in data issued by Seoul-based market consultancy UBI Research in February.
Samsung Display's share of the smartphone AMOLED panel market is currently being eroded by its emerging competitors, and is estimated to fall to 72 percent in 2020 from 89 percent in 2017, according to UBI Research.
In the global battleground, Liu believes firms can gain some advantages by setting up headquarters in Shenzhen, China's innovation hub.
Shenzhen and the entire Pearl River Delta offer the necessary supply chain and policy support that can help firms like Royole to fast-track the development and commercial application of new technologies, Liu opined.
"There was a joke saying that global electronics product prices will fluctuate if there is a traffic jam on the expressway linking Guangzhou and Shenzhen," he said, referring to the significance of Shenzhen in global electronics development.
