CSOT Acquires Samsung's LCD Line in Suzhou

An OLED smartphone panel from CSOT

A subsidiary of Chinese home appliance company TCL is supplying a small amount of OLED panels for smartphones to Samsung Electronics.

TCL has confirmed a news report that its display subsidiary, China Star Optoelectronics (CSOT), is supplying OLED smartphone panels to Samsung Electronics.

Earlier, DigiTimes, a Taiwanese IT daily paper, reported that CSOT has started supplying OLED panels to the Korean smartphone giant.

This marked the first time that TCL has supplied OLED panels to Samsung. TCL is supplying LCD panels for Samsung smart TVs. Samsung Electronics is TCL's second-largest customer.

Samsung Electronics has until recently received OLED smartphone panels only from its subsidiary Samsung Display. But it recently adopted Chinese panels to sharpen the price competitiveness of its low- and medium-priced models. Samsung Electronics has decided to load OLED panels from China's BOE into some of its Galaxy M series, which will hit emerging markets such as India.

Samsung’s partnership with CSOT is drawing attention. CSOT bought Samsung Electronics’ LCD production lines in Suzhou, China for 1.2 trillion won in 2020.


Market watchers predict that Samsung Display, which is ranked first in the smartphone panel market, will inevitably lose its market share as price war is intensifying. Samsung Display's share in the smartphone OLED panel market will shrink from 77 percent in 2021 to 65 percent in 2022, while Chinese companies, represented by BOE and CSOT, will boost their share from 15 percent in 2021 to 27 percent in 2022, said market research company Omdia.

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