[NEWS IN FOCUS] XR headsets offer new opportunities to display makers

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[NEWS IN FOCUS] XR headsets offer new opportunities to display makers

Published: 18 Jun. 2023, 06:00 Updated: 18 Jun. 2023, 15:07

Apple's Vision Pro [APPLE]

Enthusiasm in the XR, or extended reality, headset market sparked by Apple’s Vision Pro will likely serve as a boon for Korea’s major display supplier, creating a new revenue stream amid stagnant sales of the panels used in televisions and smartphones.

Although Sony has been selected as the display supplier for the Vision Pro for now, Sony's production capacity for the displays in question is reportedly just 900,000 units per year.

If Apple has plans to make a second or third generation of its headset series, it may have to look for secondary and tertiary suppliers such as Samsung Display or LG Display.

Vision Pro comes with a hefty price tag of $3,499, with nearly half the cost derived from the high-tech display panels inside and outside the headset.

The panels are called micro-OLED, or OLEDoS (OLED on Silicon), because the OLED elements are deployed on top of silicon wafers instead of glass plate.

Micro-OLED features smaller pixels than conventional OLED, enabling much higher resolutions.

Vision Pro is packed with two 1.41-inch 4K micro-OLED displays for a total of 23 million pixels across both displays. Apple explains that is more pixels than a 4K TV for each eye.

Achieving such pixel density is critical for headsets like Vision Pro because the display is extremely close to the eyes. If there are not enough pixels, users can see the cracks between the pixels, causing nausea.

The micro-OLED displays inside the Vision Pro cost $350 each.

“The total production cost is estimated at $1,519, about 48.1 percent of which comes from the internal and external displays,” said Lee Kyu-ha, an analyst at NH Investment and Securities.

“The cost of the headset has risen a lot due to the expensive micro-OLED.”

Vision Pro’s micro-OLED technology utilizes color filters on top of white OLED panel, which is why it's often called WOLED. The white light beamed from the panel goes through the color filters to create diverse shades.

In comparison, an RGB (red, green and blue) OLED doesn’t use color filters. Instead, each pixel radiates its own color.
RGB OLEDs are not yet ready for mass production, although they hold an advantage over white-OLEDs by emitting brighter colors.

Samsung Display is banking on RGB-type OLED panels in the future, focusing its research and development there.

The panel maker announced its acquisition of U.S. RGB micro-OLED panel maker eMagin for $218 million early this year. The New York-based company, founded in 2000, specializes in what’s called Direct Patterning technology, or dPd, which enables full-color microdisplays with improved energy efficiency and color gamuts, according to the company.

"An RGB-type micro-OLED will not be ready for mass production for the next couple of years," said a source from Samsung Display.

LG Display is also making full-fledged efforts to develop micro-OLED panels. It unveiled its 0.42-inch micro-OLED prototype dedicated to VR and AR at CES 2023.

It also joined forces with chipmakers LX Semicon and SK hynix, who will produce the silicon wafers needed to manufacture micro-OLED panels.

The headset market is expected to grow from $942 million last year to $7.3 billion in 2025, according to market tracker Counterpoint Research.

“That means the market will double every year for some time,” said Suh Min-chul, a professor of Information Display at Kyung Hee University.

“The risk lies in China catching up in technology development. It is important for Korean companies to secure unapproachable technological advancement.”

Meta, a major player in the headset market, is expected to launch its Quest 3 VR headset in the fall.

Samsung Electronics is also collaborating with Google and Qualcomm to introduce an XR headset.

Samsung's upcoming headset will likely launch with Samsung Display's WOLED panels.