The digital signage industry has long been strangers to OLED, notes Florian Rotberg of invidis. Architects and customers love the ultra-thin displays that can be elegantly integrated into the shopfitting – integrators avoid them to this day. Not only because of the premium price surcharge, but primarily because of the lack of brightness and the reflective surface. The latest OLEDs now achieve over 1,000 nits and could therefore also be suitable for digital signage.
In addition to classic LEDs, LG, Samsung, Sony & Co are also hoping for increasing demand for OLED displays. Since Chinese manufacturers have dominated LCD production, Korean and Japanese suppliers have been trying their luck in OLED and other premium displays.
The focus seems to be on OLED in particular – not only with the OLED-LFD inventor LG but also with the competitors Samsung and Sony. Both get the large-format, second-generation OLED displays from LG Display, but refine them with their own components and features. Samsung relies on Quantum Dot (QD-OLED) for better and, in particular, brighter image display.
According to Techradar, the Samsung S95C already achieves 1,400 nits in standard mode. Far more than the few hundred nits of the first OLED generation and also 450 nits more than LG’s second OLED generation.
But brightness still comes with a hefty retail price these days. At the IFA in Berlin, Samsung, Sony and LG are now showing new models with significantly lower prices. There is growing hope that OD-OLED (Samsung) and W-OLED (LG) can now also be offered as professional digital signage solutions. Certainly not yet in Berlin, but at the end of January in Barcelona would be a suitable moment.
We are curious – because the wafer-thin OLED displays (also transparent and curved) are finding more and more friends among architects.
Brightness helps, of course, with using OLED in well-lit retail and business environments. OLED also needs lots of lighting power to drive saturated colors.
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