Market updates - Page 32

UBI Research posted an interesting note. The company says that rigid OLED shipments (237 million) command a 79.2% market share of the entire OLED smartphone market, up from 64.5% in 2018.

Display makers have mostly invested in flexible OLED production - but currently there is higher demand for the lower cost rigid OLEDs. All rigid OLED lines are currently in full capacity and UBI suggests that we may see some companies converting flexible OLED lines to rigid OLED production - or that we'll see new investments in rigid OLED production.

BOE held its annual Innovation Partner Conference in Beijing, and the company's chairman said that the company aims to produce at least 70 million flexible AMOLED panels. This is a sharp increase from what BOE estimated only last month.

BOE has been known to make aggressive targets - it first aimed to produce 30-50 million AMOLED panels in 2019, but eventually the number of panels in 2019 will be around 20 million.

UBI Research says that the size of smartphone OLED panels is slowly increasing - in 2017, 52.5% of the OLED panels were 5.5-5.99 inch in size, and in 2019 this decreased to 49.6%.

Looking back at 2017, 78.5% of all OLED smartphones were larger than 5.5-inch, and this has grown to 91.9% in 2019. Consumers are preferring larger and larger smartphone displays...

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent reported its financial results for Q3 2019 - revenues of $335.5 million and a non-GAAP gross profit of $122 million.

Regarding the OLED market, Coherent says that it finally started to receive some new orders for OLED equipment (ELA), following a "stretch" where there were no new system orders. Coherent says that it looks forward to the OLED ramp - with 2020 as a "bit of a recovery over 2019" - but the real strength coming in 2021 and 2022.

China-based display maker BOE posted its financial results for Q3 2019. While BOE first hoped to ship 30-50 million OLED panels in 2019, it lowered its forecast to 30 million in August and now BOE says that it will ship around 20 million panels in 2019.

BOE is confident, though, that it will ship at least 40 million OLEDs in 2020. BOE says that next year it will start shipments to customers outside of China (earlier this month it was reported that BOE is approaching Korean phone makers as it aims to increase its OLED customer base).

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung Display will supply around 40-50 million flexible AMOLED displays to Apple in the second half of 2019. Apple's latest iPhone lineup was met with positive market response (this was already reported earlier this month by Bloomberg).

According to the report, Samsung supplied Apple with 3.9 million OLEDs in July, 8.4 million in August and 9.9 million in September. Apple's original plan was to order 6.9 million panels in September but demand was stronger than expected.

Samsung recently re-launched its foldable OLED smartphone, the Galaxy Fold - and the $2,000 smartphone seems to be selling well. In September it was reported that Samsung is seeing strong demand in Korea, and now there is a report from Korea that Samsung Display is ramping up its foldable OLED production.

According to the Korea Herald, SDC has produced 40,000 foldable in August, and had planned to increase that to 67,000 units in September. But it actually produced 92,000 foldable panels in September, and it plans to increase production rate to 102,000 units in October and 99,000 units in November. Samsung's foldable OLED capacity is 3,300 units per day - so it is pretty much running at full capacity now.

Samsung posted its Q3 2019 financial estimates - and the company's income was higher than what was expected from analysts - even though profit dropped over 50% compared to 2018.

Bloomberg says that Samsung Display has seen increased demand for OLED displays - due to strong sales of Samsung's own Note 10 smartphone and Apple's iPhone 11 Pro.

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the flexible, VR/AR, microdisplays, automotive, PMOLED and graphene OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to October 2019.

The Flexible and Foldable OLED Market Report:

• Why flexible displays and lighting panels are so exciting
• What kind of flexible displays are currently on the market
• All about the foldable OLED market and industry
• What the future holds for flexible OLEDs
• How to acquire flexible OLEDs for your products

The report package provides a good introduction to the flexible and foldable OLED market - present and future. It details both flexible displays and lighting technologies. Read more here!

DSCC says that OLED panel unit shipments will reach 1.06 billion by 2023. The growth will peak in 2020 (with a 27% unit growth and 25% revenue growth from 2019). Overall revenues for OLED panels will grow from $26.5 billion in 2018 to $46.2 billion in 2023.

DSCC says that it lowered its OLED TV forecast for 2020-2023, as LGD is delaying both its Guangzhou 8.5-Gen fab ramp up and its P10 10.5-Gen line by one year. New LCD technologies, including dual-cell LCD and miniLEDs will also hurt the growth of the OLED TV market. DSCC further reports that LG Electronics will not be able to reach its 2 million OLED TV goal in 2019 - and have asked LGD to supply it with only 2.5 million OLED TV panels in 2020 (the original plan was to supply 3.5 million panels to LGE).