Chinese LED video wall companies are researching new international markets and putting a renewed focus on durability, lower power consumption and innovation as they look to counter a “continuing period of punitive tariffs,” reported Futuresource Wednesday. Narrow pixel pitch remains a “key battleground,” with companies now migrating more to sub-2.5mm, it said. With stiffer competition, vendors are focusing on quality as a differentiator, and by 2021 NPP will have overtaken LCD video wall in annual revenue, said the researcher. The worldwide LED video wall market totaled $5.7 billion last year and is expected to grow in double digits through 2023.

Chinese panel maker Chengdu CEC Panda Display (CCPD) is using Corning Astra glass on its oxide-LCD line for large-screen TV and monitor backplane substrates, said Corning Thursday. Corning used the Display Week expo in May to debut Astra as a display glass substrate material "optimized" for LCD and OLED oxide applications in premium TVs, notebooks and tablets with higher resolutions and refresh rates (see 1905110001). It said then that Astra had begun shipments to one of its big oxide customers for use in 8K TVs launching in 2019's second half. Corning confirmed Thursday that CCPD was that customer. A spokesperson declined comment on the specifics of the 8K TV product.

Nanosys signed an exclusive global license agreement to use the quantum-dot intellectual property portfolio of Yissum, the "technology transfer company" of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for display, lighting and healthcare applications, said the companies Tuesday. The agreement includes more than 60 granted "key" patents or pending applications across a dozen patent "families" for technology on the “base composition” of heavy-metal-free QDs, plus “novel material structures such as nanorods that may enable improved photoelectronic performance for a variety of future applications,” they said. The agreement grants Nanosys the authority to sublicense the patents to other companies, they said.

Display-driver chip supplier Himax Technology expects Q3 revenue in its large-screen display segment to decline from Q2 by the high-teens, said CEO Jordan Wu on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. There’s significant “overcapacity” and weak demand in large panels, and it’s “unlikely” that will "change in the near future," he said. “We expect to return to growth starting Q1 2020,” he said. 8K TVs “will continue to hold a small share in the TV market because 8K content and transmission technology are still early in their “lifecycle,” he said. “But 8K TVs remain a strategic area for Himax” and are expected to boost demand for higher-end LCD driver chips and timing-controller components, he said. Himax is “seeing softness in all industries that consume display,” said Wu. “We have faced multiple challenges that have had an adverse effect on our overall financial performance over the past 12 months,” including “severe” shortages in chip-on-film materials supply and wafer capacity, he said. “While these constraints were resolved towards the end of 2018, we are still suffering from the repercussions of the loss of new projects,” he said. “We did not get to take part in the mass production of those projects, many of which started in the second or third quarter this year,” said Wu. The stock lost nearly 23 percent of its value the past two trading days after closing 13.7 percent lower Friday at $2.34.

Upscale U.K. department store Harrods is opening an “OLED Zone” on the fifth floor of its London store, showing TVs from LG, Bang & Olufsen, Panasonic and Philips, said LG Display Tuesday. The display will include OLED point-of-purchase advertising. The store also features OLED TV technology in an interactive window installation through Sept. 1 in show windows surrounding door 5 of its Knightsbridge building, it said.

Amazon began shipping the 7-inch Kindle Oasis e-reader Wednesday with a feature to automatically schedule screen display color temperature for day or night reading. Users also can manually adjust color temperature to preference. Oasis is $249 for the 8 GB version, $279 for 32 GB. The Paperwhite screen uses a 330 pixel-per-inch E Ink display.

Nanosys completed the multimillion-dollar expansion of its manufacturing facility in Milpitas, California, that more than doubled its annual production capacity of quantum dot materials to more than 50 tons, it said Tuesday. Privately held Nanosys didn’t disclose the size of the investment, but spokesperson Jeff Yurek emailed that the amount was less than $10 million. QD display adoption “continues to grow,” said CEO Jason Hartlove. The plant was rapidly reaching its previous 25-ton capacity last year, he said. QDs enable a “new generation” of Ultra HD displays to render “vivid color, lifelike brightness and incredible power efficiency at a fraction of the cost of competing light emitting technologies,” said Nanosys in a veiled reference to OLED.

LG Display will spend 3 trillion won ($2.5 billion) to expand production at its existing Gen 10.5 OLED plant in Paju, South Korea, optimized for 65-inch and larger TV screens, it said Tuesday. “Demand for OLED has grown sharply along with the recognition of its premium value, creating new opportunities and new markets,” it said. LG will use the investment to build an OLED evaporation facility for the 30,000 substrates it’s already producing monthly at Paju, plus an additional plant to add capacity of 15,000 substrates a month beginning in the first half of 2023, it said. “LG Display expects to solidify its competitiveness in the supersized TV market once it completes its Gen 10.5 OLED production facility,” it said. “Based on the increased production and cost efficiency that its Gen 10.5 OLED production line will bring about, LG Display will find new applications and markets for OLED while also expanding the existing OLED TV market, thereby strengthening its leading position in the OLED display industry.”

Global sales for OLED “stack materials” for all display applications are expected to rise at a 17 percent compound annual growth rate, reaching $2.28 billion in 2023, blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants Tuesday. The forecast factors in a “reduced outlook” for hybrid quantum dot OLED TVs, “as we see Samsung implementing this technology at a delayed pace,” said DSCC. Samsung didn’t comment. “We still expect that the OLED stack costs for QD OLED will be substantially lower” than those for the white OLED solutions currently embedded in the OLED TV market, DSCC said. “WOLED unyielded material stack costs will be continuously improving,” but from the time when QD OLED is introduced, “its unyielded stack costs are expected to be only a little more than half as much,” it said. “Of course, that’s only a part of the picture, because the yields on the mature WOLED technology will certainly be higher than those for QD OLED in its initial stages, and even more important, the color converter in QD OLED will be substantially more expensive than the color filter used in WOLED.”

LG is partnering with the Pantone Color Institute at a New York pop-up called Cafe OLED July 12-14. The space, in Manhattan's Soho district, will “marry the billion-plus colors on LG OLED TVs” with artisan pastries designed by cookbook author Amirah Kassem, founder of Flour Shop, known for colorful cakes and pastries, including the "Explosion Cake." At the pop-up, Pantone will showcase its summer color trend report of top colors fashion designers are featuring this season; the colors will be displayed on LG OLED TVs.