Samsung to supply Huawei and other display news +3

20:49 26-Oct-20

Reuters is reporting that Samsung Display has obtained the licenses it sought to continue supply panels to Huawei.  This is positive for Universal Display and, to a lesser extent, MagnaChip.  Since both are reporting on what promises to be an extremely busy Thursday night, I thought I'd update on recent developments now.

Although this news won't affect the current quarter, it brightens the outlook, and I see no reason for UDC not to have a breakout quarter, with Apple introducing an all-AMOLED phone lineup and LG Display expecting to sell 4.5M OLED televisions this year.  Even recent research looks very positive, with Stanford & Samsung collaborating on a new AMOLED architecture that dramatically improves both resolution and lifetime.  The 10K pixels per inch makes the approach particularly suited to Virtual Reality applications, and thus might be regarded as a limiting factor for eMagin.

I remain concerned about the future though, and continue to see OLED as overpriced.  Micro-LED still looks like the heir-apparent for all sorts of screens, and I see no reason why even the research above could not be applied to that technology.  In the meantime, inkjet AMOLED plans continue to progress with Kyulux signing a development contract for TADF production and TCL planning mass manufacturing in 2024, using the Japanese technology.  I don't know whether or not this report will be the last hurrah for UDC, but I can hear the clock ticking down.