Faster than LCDs
China is in hot pursuit of Korea in the global organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display market. While Korea is still far ahead of China in terms of market share, China has caught up with Korea in terms of production capacity by 10-plus percentage points.
China’s OLED display production capacity is 43.7 percent, while that of Korea 54.9 percent, global market research firm Trendforce said in a report on July 25.
China’s OLED display production capacity was less than 10 percent only five years ago. Today, it is more than 40 percent, only a 10 percentage point gap with Korea.
In the small and medium-sized OLED display market, Samsung Display, which once held a market share of more than 80 percent, fell to 54.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to market research firm Omdia.
Meanwhile, China’s BOE, which had fiercely competed with LG Display for second place, jumped into second place with a 19.2 percent share in the first quarter, beating out LG Display with a 17.4 percent share.
Korea had claimed the top spot in the global display market for 17 years since 2004 but was overtaken by the government-backed Chinese display industry in 2021. However, there is still a large gap in the OLED display market, with an 81.3 percent share held by Korea and 17.9 percent by China.
In the global liquid crystal display (LCD) market, China’s dominance is becoming more solid. In 2022, China’s LCD market share stood at 55.5 percent, Taiwan’s 27.6 percent, Korea’s 13.5 percent, and Japan’s 2.9 percent. China was the only country to increase its market share.
Display Industry insiders are concerned that China has expanded its share of the OLED display market faster than it did that of the LCD market in the past.
According to the Korea Display Industry Association, it took China 10 years to reach a 20 percent share of the global market in small and medium-sized LCDs but eight years to reach 20 percent in small and medium-sized OLED displays. To leave China’s pursuit out in the OLED display market, Korean companies are pulling out all the stops by investing heavily in OLED displays among others.
In April, Samsung Display announced that it will invest a total of 4.1 trillion won by 2026 to build the world’s first 8.6-generation IT OLED display production facility in Asan, South Chungcheong Province. Its intention is to significantly widen its gap with Chinese competitors in OLED display technology.
Meanwhile, the OLED display market continues to grow. According to Omdia, demand for OLED displays is expected to grow by 11.0 percent annually on average from 2022 to 2030.
TrendForce forecast that the share of smartphones with OLED panels will exceed 50 percent this year, up from 42 percent in 2022, and then cross 60 percent in 2026.