Demand for OLED Panels Likely to Soar
The rapid growth of the 5G smartphone market is expected to fuel demand for organic light emitting diode (OLED) panels from Samsung Display. OLED display panels for smartphones are better than LCD panels in terms of design, space efficiency and response speed.
Market researcher IDC predicted in a recent report that next year’s 5G smartphone shipments will reach 190 million units, more than 17 times the estimated 11 million units for this year. The figure is expected to grow rapidly by 100 million units every year to 340 million units in 2021, 440 million units in 2022, and 540 million units in 2023.
Accordingly, small and medium-sized OLED displays churned out by Samsung Display are expected to discover new growth engines. In particular, 5G phones can transmit large amounts of data in real time, which is suitable for video content consumption. In addition, smartphone makers have no choice but to use OLED panels as they are thinner and lighter than LCD panels while securing space for 5G modem chips, large-capacity batteries, and cooling devices.
Recently, Displaymate in the United States gave the highest grade “Excellent A+” to Samsung's flexible OLED panels, which Google loaded onto its latest smartphone Pixel4 XL.
Thanks to this quality excellence, 5G smartphone makers including Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo are all adopting OLED displays for their latest smartphones. Samsung Display maintains a monopoly position in the global smartphone OLED market with an 86 percent share, followed by China's BOE (6 percent), Ever Display (4 percent), and Visoinox (2 percent), according to market research firm IHS Markit.
Meanwhile, IDC said that global 5G smartphone shipments in the third quarter of this year were estimated at 3.2 million units and Samsung Electronics recorded 2.4 million units with a 74 percent share.