LG Display reportedly aiming to get some of the orders for displays for Apple’s headset
The Elec cites unnamed sources when delivering the news. According to the info the Korean media website obtained, LG Display is gearing up to develop and manufacture a MicroOLED panels for Apple’s mixed reality headset.In order to do that, LG Display is reportedly going to order the deposition equipment needed to make MicroOLED.
For now, though, Cupertino’s mixed reality headset might use Sony’s MicroOLED panel for its first MR device. The outer screen (dubbed an ‘indicator’), according to the publication, will have a regular OLED panel. This one is expected to come from LG.
The MicroOLED panel LG Display is aiming to manufacture will probably go for the second generation of Apple’s mixed reality headset. That’s what good planning ahead is, actually – the first-gen is still only rumored at this point, but here is LG, preparing for the second-gen! Kudos to them, we might add.
But what exactly is MicroOLED? Well, without diving into substrates and light-emitting diodes too much, the difference between conventional OLED panels and MicroOLED (sometimes called OLED on Silicon or OLEDoS) is that the latter mounts the OLED on a silicon substrate, instead of on glass.
And, for those of you who don’t know, OLED itself stands for ‘organic light-emitting diode’. Basically, OLED uses an organic material (its pixels, in a nutshell) to produce the light, and the light can be controlled on a pixel-by-pixel basis. That’s why we get more vivid colors on OLED displays instead of LCD (with LCD, the pixels don’t produce the light themselves, the panel needs a backlight to present anything).
OLED on Silicon, or MicroOLED, is generally expected to be more used for virtual reality, AR, or mixed reality devices.
For now, Apple’s mixed reality headset’s panel is reportedly going to be provided by Sony, but in the future, Apple might also choose LG Display. Well, we have to wait and see what happens.
