Massive Market Share
The presence of automotive organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays in the display market is growing. Experts forecast that their market size and shipments will steadily increase as a shift to software-driven vehicles (SDVs) accelerates, with premium automakers leading the way.
According to market research firm Omdia on July 17, the automotive OLED market is expected to expand from US$481.75 million this year to US$2.17786 billion by 2027. That means the market will expand more than 4.5 times over the next four years.
In terms of shipments, the market is expected to grow from 1.48 million units this year to more than 4 million units in 2025 and 9 million units in 2027, a sevenfold increase in just four years. This is in contrast to the information technology (IT) display market, which has been stagnant due to an economic downturn, weak consumer sentiment and too many competitors in the market.
In a report on automotive OLED displays published by Omdia in 2022, it estimated this year’s market size at US$360 million and a shipment forecast at 1.14 million units, up 30 percent from 890,000 units. But Omdia raised its forecast again this year as the OLED display industry continued to grow faster than expected.
This is largely due to the rapid adoption of OLED displays in vehicles, especially in premium cars. Compared to liquid crystal displays (LCDs), OLED displays are characterized by low power, high definition, and light weight, making them ideal for the era of electric vehicles. They also offer a lot of flexibility in terms of design, as they can cover curved surfaces.
While China has a large share in the LCD-based automotive display market, Korean companies are virtually dominating the automotive OLED display market. In 2022, LG Display accounted for 50.0 percent of the automotive OLED market by sales, followed by Samsung Display at 42.7 percent and China’s BOE at only 7.3 percent. The automotive OLED displays require durability to withstand high vibration, large temperature fluctuations, and dust, making Chinese display companies’ price war ineffective. A high technical barrier means that orders are mostly going to Korean companies that have succeeded in entering the OLED display market. Industry insiders believe that Korean display companies have a technology gap of at least two years with Chinese competitors in automotive OLED technology.
In terms of building a stable business portfolio, automotive OLED displays are also good items for the Korean display industry. This is because the automotive OLED display business is an order-based business in which production volume is secured in advance, so it is relatively less affected by the market, and a certain profit can be secured. The prices of car OLED panels are also 5 to 6 times higher than those of IT OLED displays, which helps automotive OLED display makers enjoy high profitability.
Automotive OLED display makers are busy securing corporate customers. Samsung Display has secured corporate customers such as BMW and Audi. In April this year, it signed an agreement with Ferrari to supply OLED panels. In two to three years, Hyundai Motor’s next-generation Genesis will also be loaded with Samsung Display’s automotive OLED panels.
LG Display, which successfully commercialized automotive OLED displays for the first time in 2019, has been supplying automotive OLED panels to Mercedes-Benz since 2020, following the Cadillac Escalade in 2019. The 2024 Genesis GV80 facelift model, which will be released later this year, will also be equipped with LG Display’s 27-inch panoramic automotive OLED displays. The company also made a technological improvement this year by starting mass production of the second generation of tandem OLED displays with two stacked organic light-emitting layers. This method has the advantage of higher brightness and durability than the existing single-layer method.
“Global automakers have been visiting Korean automotive OLED lines since the beginning of the year,” an industry insider said. “Automakers’ preferences for OLED displays will continue to rise down the road.”