Samsung Display brings advanced smartphone OLED touch tech to notebooks

Samsung Display on Tuesday said it is beginning mass production of OLED panels that integrate the touch feature directly onto the panel, aimed at notebooks.

The panels with OCTA, or on-cell touch AMOLED, technology, will first feature on Samsung Electronics’ high-end, 2023-model Galaxy Book notebooks, the South Korean display panel maker said.

Samsung Display didn’t specify the size of the panels, but Galaxy Book is currently available in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes while Samsung is expected to unveil refreshed models next month at Unpacked.

The display panel maker said its panels with OCTA technology will come in 16:10 ratio, 120Hz refresh rate, and support 3K resolution.

OCTA uses touch sensors that are directly inside the panel to achieve the touch screen feature. This allows the panel to be thinner than having a separate touch screen panel film for the same feature.

OCTA technology, which Samsung Display was the first to develop in 2010 for Samsung Electronics’ premium Galaxy S series, is widely used in panels for premium smartphones today by Apple for their iPhones as well as Samsung to make them as thin as possible.

Samsung Display, the world’s largest OLED panel maker, has been attempting to expand into OLED panels for tablets and notebooks for the past couple of years for new revenue due to the slowdown of growth in the smartphone sector.

Rival LG Display, which is dominant in OLED panels for TVs, has also been expanding into tablets and notebooks.

Samsung Display recorded high growth in 2022 thanks to the high popularity of iPhone 14 made by customer Apple, but Cupertino is the exception and other smartphone companies such as Samsung is seeing demand drop, which is expected to be worst in 2023 due to the global economic downturn that is causing demand for consumer electronics to drop and costs to increase.

Migrating existing premium OLED technologies such as OCTA from smartphones to those for notebooks is surely aimed at protecting its margins in what is a tough year ahead.