LG Display is aiming to upgrade its production facilities for flexible, Gen-6 OLED panels for smaller displays at its E6 lines in Paju of Gyeonggi Province. For this, the firm will be adding new equipment by early 2020 to produce touch-integrated panels, while switching to the LTPO backplane technology.
As the E6 lines are known to be Apple-exclusive, the touch-integrated screens are to be supplied to the new iPhones to be launched next year, according to industry sources on Dec. 17.
In the latter half of this year, LG Display had begun mass producing flexible OLED panels for Apple’s iPhones.
The equipment needed for producing the touch-integrated panels are based on technology that Samsung Display first commercialized. The technology is being called TOC Cell at LG Display. At Samsung, it was named Y-OCTA.
Meanwhile, in order to switch to LTPO backplane technology, LG Display needs Oxide equipment, which is likely to enter the Paju plant in the latter half of 2020. This equipment is said to have a monthly production volume of around 30,000.
LTPO is a low-energy OLED display technology that Apple first commercialized for the Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018. The LTPO OLED panels for the watches were mass produced at LGD’s E2 plant in Paju. These will now be produced from the Gen-6 OLED lines.
“Due to the smaller size of the smartwatch displays, it would be significantly easier to produce them from the Gen-6 lines,” said one display industry watcher.
This year, Samsung Display began mass producing LTPO OLED panels from its Asan 2 Campus A2plant in South Chungcheong Province for the Galaxy Watch Active 2.
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