Counterpoint - DSCC - Page 7

Last year DSCC estimated that the foldable OLED market will grow to 94 million panels by 2025. DSCC now updated its forecasts, and lowered its estimates to 75.6 million units in 2025.

DSCC sees Apple starting to adopt foldable OLEDs in 2023, which will boost the total market and will lead to other companies adopting foldable displays. DSCC expects foldable and rollable panels to grow at an 87.5% CAGR from 2020 to 2025. Smartphones will dominate with a market share of over 92% during the entire forecast period.

DSCC posted an interesting blog post in which the company shares its information on Samsung's upcoming foldable smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip

First up is the Galaxy Z Flip 3 (which is a bit strange as there's no Galaxy Z Flip 2). This new phone will feature an Ultra Thin Glass cover - which for the first time will not be exclusively produced by SCHOTT. This time Corning will supply some of the UTG for Samsung. According to DSCC, Corning’s UTG will be processed by Korean supplier eCONY. This is interesting - a while back it was reported that Samsung Electronics halted its UTG project with Corning.

DSCC has lowered its OLED equipment spending estimate and forecast. DSCC is saying this is due to low OLED utilization rates in China's lower-tiered producers, delays in OLED TV production plans in China as companies are focusing on LCDs due to increase demand - and also new technologies such as mini-LEDs.

DSCC sees OLED equipment spending falling in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and surging back in 2025. Total 2020-2025 OLED equipment spending on an install basis is expected to to be $49 billion.

DSCC says that inkjet printing technologies for OLED display production is finally starting to gain traction, and the company sees IJP OLED display capacity to increase in a 137% CAGR from 2020 to 2025, to reach 7.1 million sqm.

As you can see from the chart, most of the growth will come from the printing of the quantum-dots color conversion layers in Samsung's QD-OLED fabs. Actual RGB inkjet printing will be confined to JOLED's fab which will start mass producing in 2021. In 2024, China Star (CSoT) will begin printing OLED TV panels at its T8 line.

DSCC says that the AR and VR markets are set for quick growth, and display sales for AR and VR devices will grow at a CAGR of 52% between 2020 and 2026, to reach $4.2 billion in sales (up from $347 million in 2020). This forecast does not include military applications.

DSCC says that new technologies, specifically designed components and strong push by consumer electronic giants like Sony and Apple will drive this fast growth in VR and AR adoption. As you can see in the chart above actual see-through AR will remain a relatively small market even in 2026. The main problem with AR will remain display brightness, and DSCC see microLED technologies providing a breakthrough in this market.

DSCC says that OLED production will grow 94% in the Q2 2021, fueled by strong demand for OLED in smartphones, TVs and other devices - coupled with a recovery from the pandemic. Growth in OLED input area for small & medium displays is expected to grow 68%, while grow in OLED TV input area will grow by 134% over last year.

The chart above shows the total OLED (and mobile LCD) industry capacity. As you can see, flexible OLED capacity is growing - mainly from expansions by CSoT, Tianma and Visionox. There's also growth in rigid OLED capacity - from Everdisplay and JOLED.

DSCC says that foldable smartphone shipments will rise sharply starting in August 2021 - and total foldable OLED smartphone shipments in Q4 2021 will be higher than the whole period from Q1 2020 to Q2 2021 - combined.

There are several reasons for this high increase in projected shipments. First of all, Samsung is expected to release several new foldable smartphones in Q3 2021 - three models in fact, including an "aggressively priced" clamshell foldable.

DSCC published an interesting post that details the production costs of both WOLED and miniLED TV panels. So first of all, it details LG's current costs for producing OLED TVs, as you can see in the chart below. The costs of producing larger 77-inch and 8-3inch panels are significantly larger than the costs of 65-inch and smaller TV panels:

Interestingly, DSCC says that in 2020, the production costs in LG's Guangzhou fab was higher than the costs in LG's Korean OLED TV fab as the yields in Korea are higher - but this will change in 2021 as China has lower costs for depreciation, personnel and more. DSCC estimates that production costs for a 55-inch or 65-inch WOLED panel will be 14% lower in China than in Korea.

DSCC posted an interesting post with its latest views and forecasts on the OLED material market. The company expects AMOLED stack material sales to grow at a 18% CAGR in the next five years, from $294 million in 2019 to $2.46 billion in 2024. Compared to its previous estimate, DSCC sees higher sales as demand for OLED TVs and OLEDs in the IT market (tablets and notebooks) is increasing.

DSCC also posted an analysis of LGD's new evo OLED material stack. Compared to LGD's "standard" WOLED stack, the evo adds an emitting green layer to improve the brightness by 20%. This of course adds an extra material cost to the panel price.

DSCC posted an interesting chart that details OLED smartwatch shipments by supplier. This is an interesting market as there are almost 10 suppliers with no dominant player:

In fact DSCC says that there are five different OLED panel makers (BOE, SDC, LGD, EDO and Truly) that each has a market share over 10% in 2020.