OLED Panel Sales Growing Rapidly
The possibility of OLED display driver IC (DDI) undersupply is rising along with the global OLED panel demand. A DDI is a small chip driving the numerous pixels of a display.
According to market research firm DSCC, the global OLED sales for the second quarter of this year are estimated at US$6.89 billion, up 30 percent from a year earlier. “This year’s sales are estimated at US$42.5 billion with a year-on-year increase of more than 30 percent, which is likely to be led by laptop and tablet PC demands,” it said.
With such devices as well as smartphones employing OLED, OLED DDI supply is becoming increasingly tight. In the first quarter, the average selling price was US$0.45, up 20 percent in one year.
At present, a number of companies are capable of OLED DDI design, but only Samsung Electronics, TSMC and UMC are capable of manufacturing. Different display manufacturers require different types of DDIs, and the margin of the product is smaller than those of mobile application processors and so on despite the necessity of the optimization. Besides, OLED panels require high-performance DDIs as compared with LCD.
As such, a rapid increase in production to catch up with the demand increase is impossible. Besides, a global chip shortage is already ongoing and foundries are already saturated worldwide.