Korean Companies Under Pressure to Develop More Advanced Products
South Korean display manufacturers need to accelerate their development of more advanced OLED displays, with Chinese companies rapidly following them in the OLED display market, an industry analyst said in Seoul on Feb. 21.
Kang Min-su, an analyst of Omdia, a technology research company, presented a display technology roadmap for 2023 at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Feb. 21. "Korean companies are still leading the OLED market based on differentiated technologies such as foldables, but they must remember the precedent of losing the LCD market to China,” he warned.
Last year, the scale of the global display market was 150 trillion won with LCD and OLED displays accounting for 54 percent and 36 percent, respectively. According to market research firms, the sales of next-generation displays such as OLED and micro-LED are expected to increase 9 percent on annual average to account for more than 40 percent of the total market sales in 2029.
In the OLED display segment, the combined market share of Samsung Display and LG Display was 100 percent in the past and is over 80 percent now. They are four to six years ahead of Chinese companies in large displays and a couple of years ahead in smaller displays.
The South Korean government announced on Feb. 20 that it would come up with plans for the industry in the second quarter of this year, which are expected to include next-generation OLED display commercialization in 2027 and inorganic LED display commercialization in 2030.