Universal Display signed five-year extensions of its license and supply agreements with panel maker LG Display, said the OLED technology and materials supplier Thursday. Financial details and additional terms weren’t disclosed. Universal’s two-decade partnership with LG Display “began when CRTs were still the primary display technology for TVs,” said CEO Steve Abramson.

LG Display landed Discomfort Glare Free marketing claim verification from UL for its OLED TV panels, it said Wednesday. Its panels are the first to be recognized for emitting no glare, which can cause eyes to tire easily, said the company. UL’s testing is based on the Unified Glare Rating (UGR) recognized by the International Commission on Illumination. The verification mark is issued when the UGR is 22 or less when watching TV between 70 and 300 lux, said LG.

Q2 shipments of display glass are expected to increase by 4% sequentially, reaching a quarterly record 165 million square meters (197.3 square yards), reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Strong demand for large-screen LCD TV panels is fueling the increase, it said. Shipments in Q1 have been flat compared with Q4 2020, “despite the reduced number of working days and the supply constraints” stemming from a power outage at the Nippon Electric Glass (NEG) plant in Takatsuki, Japan, said DSCC. “Considering the strong demand and constraints on glass supply by its two Japanese competitors,” NEG and Asahi Glass, Corning announced an increase in glass prices for Q2, it said. DSCC projects Q2 glass revenue will increase 7% from Q1 and 18% year on year, it said.

Samsung Display took the top position in 2020's smartphone display panel market with 50% revenue share, reported Strategy Analytics Thursday. BOE and LG Display were Nos. 2 and 3, with 15% and 8% share, respectively, said SA. Smartphone display panel revenue rose 7% year over year, “driven by the expansion of OLED display technology in the supply chain of key smartphone vendors, leading to increased shipment of OLED panels to customers,” it said.

GameStop is “continuing the work” to expand its “addressable market” by growing its “product catalog,” said CEO George Sherman on a call Tuesday for Q4 ended Jan. 30. “This includes growing our product offerings across PC gaming, computers, monitors, game tables, mobile gaming and gaming TVs,” he said. “These categories represent natural extensions that our customers would expect to buy from us, expanding our addressable market size by over five times, and over time will reduce our reliance on the cyclicality of the console-based gaming market.” GameStop’s online store has a wide assortment of Vizio 4K TVs.

Display fab utilization remains strong in Q1, amid LCD panel prices at “multi-year highs and spot shortages in some display applications,” reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. DSCC projects total Q1 glass inputs into the fabs to reach 79.6 million square meters (856.8 million square feet), about flat compared with Q4, but up 12% from the 2020 quarter. DSCC tracked about 100 facilities globally, finding fab utilization “particularly strong” in Taiwan and China, it said. Though utilizations in Taiwan are down slightly in Q1, they are expected to remain above 90% for the fifth straight quarter in Q2, it said. Worldwide utilization in Q2 is expected to hit 88%, its highest quarterly level since 2018's Q4, it said.

OLED microdisplay supplier eMagin expects to continue working in 2021 on “scalability” to bring its direct-patterning OLED process technology to consumer augmented- and virtual-reality headsets, said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Q4 call Thursday: “Our OLED microdisplays will satisfy the brightness, contrast, speed and resolution needed for AR and VR headsets.” The $4.4 million eMagin got in contract revenue last year “primarily reflected development work for a tier 1 consumer company for an advanced display design and proof of concept for a consumer AR/VR device,” said acting Chief Financial Officer Mark Koch. Bringing the project to the next layer of development will hinge on the tier 1 company finding a “mass production partner,” said Sculley.

The global PC monitor market finished 2020 with the strongest year since IDC began tracking the category in 2008. Shipments increased 8.3% to 136.6 million. Q4 shipments grew 16.9% to 39.2 million, biggest since Q4 2011, reported the company Thursday: Demand for remote work and learning connectivity tools helped fuel growth. Though some geographies “have seen life move closer to pre-pandemic levels, ongoing restrictions of varying degrees continued to help funnel consumer budgets to furnish their homes for work or entertainment, even as low office occupancy inhibited commercial monitor spending,” it said. Semiconductor constraints, including display driver IC shortages, forced manufacturers “to amass stock ahead of component price hikes that could last through the middle of 2021,” it said. Dell, TPV, HP, Lenovo and Samsung finished as the top five brand share leaders. U.S. importers sourced 38.6 million PC monitors from all countries last year, down about 1.2% from 2019, according to Census Bureau data we accessed Thursday through the International Trade Commission's DataWeb tool. But January imports of 3.56 million PC monitors rose 92% from January 2019, it said.

TCL brought its OD Zero mini LED backlighting technology to a smart screen, it said Thursday. Zero distance between the TV backlight and the screen allows TCL’s X12 Vidrian mini-LED to house 96,000 LED chips within a 9.9 mm frame with brightness up to 2,000 nits and a 10 million:1 contrast ratio, said the company. It's building intelligent applications for cross-screen interconnection, interoperability and distribution. TCL is pitting the nascent technology against OLED displays, touting color gamut, resolution, lack of burn-in and product life span at “one-third” the price. The company also introduced UI 5.0, which integrates user interface design, system interaction and scene functions around smart screen hubs. It’s working with Chinese smartphone maker vivo on a smart screen that automatically lowers screen volume when a call comes in.

Seven series of Samsung Neo QLED TVs for 2021 landed “Eye Care” certifications from Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE), the Association of German Electrical Engineers, reported the TV maker Thursday. VDE certification tests found the TVs meet eye safety requirements under International Electrotechnical Commission specifications for blue light, ultraviolet and infrared emissions and melatonin suppression levels under the International Commission on Illumination standard, said Samsung.