Market updates - Page 51

According to Digitimes Research, OLED display makers in China will increase their total annual capacity from 272,000 m² in 2016 to 7.86 million m² in 2020 - a CAGR or 131.9%.

The largest producer in 2020 will be BOE Display (35% of the Chinese OLED market), followed by Tianma (17.6%), Visionox (14%), Everdisplay (11.6%), CSoT (9.5%), Truly (7.8%) and Royole (4.5%).

UBI Research says that automobiles will start adopting OLED displays "in earnest" starting in 2018 - for instrument cluster and infotainment displays. The automotive display market itself is expected to grow quickly (CAGR of about 17% from 2017-2022) as new technologies mean that displays in cars are getting more and more important.

UBI estimates the total automotive display market at $25 billion by 2022 - out of which OLEDs will account for about 20%, or $5 billion. The main challenge still facing massive OLED adoption, according to UBI, is the lifetime of AMOLED panels.

Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) released a new free white paper (sponsored by Nanosys, a quantum-dot producer) in which it analyses the premium TV market and compares the future of OLED TV to that of QD-LCD TVs.

According to DSCC, the total TV market will grow from 261 million units in 2016 to 282 million in 2021 - a slow CAGR of 1.6". The OLED TV market will grow at a rapid rate of 50% - from 0.9 million panels in 2016 to 6.8 million in 2021. Even at this fast growth rate, OLEDs will represent only 2.4% of the total TV market in 2021. The main constraints towards faster OLED TV growth, according to DSCC, will be production capacity and not demand.

Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) released its new OLED supply, demand and equipment quarterly report, and the company supplied some interesting forecasts from that report.

DSCC sees OLED capacity rising from 7.5 million m2 in 2016 to 40.4 million m2 in 2021 - a CAGR of 52%. In terms of shipments, DSCC sees 389 million panels shipped in 2016, growing to 1.34 billion in 2021. Most of the capacity investment in the near future will be for flexible displays - and so flexible mobile OLED capacity will overtake rigid capacity in early 2018.

Taiwan-based TrendForce says that HTC is the current leader in VR headsets - with a market share of 61.4% between April 2016 and November 2016, but the Taiwanese company will not be able to extend its lead into 2017 as it will be hit the hardest from the OLED market supply shortage.

According to TrendForce, in 2017 HTC will ship 600,000 Vive units, while Sony will ship 2.5 million PlayStation VR units and Oculus is expected to ship 1.2 million units. Other brands, all combined, will ship 800,000 units. All of these VR headsets use OLED displays.

IHS says that combine OLED shipments from all active Chinese OLED makers reached over a 1.4 million panels in Q3 2016 . This is still small relative to Samsung's capacity (which made around 70 million panels in the quarter) but a step forward for these companies.

IHS says that strong demand from Chinese smartphone brands (see chart above), mostly Oppo and Vivo boosted the demand for AMOLED displays. Coupled with the reported supply shortage at SDC this created an opportunity for the new OLED makers based in China. In Q2 2016 these Chinese OLED makers produced around 600,000 panels (so production more than doubled in the quarter.

A few days ago IHS said that they see the flexible display market reaching 139 million units in 2017 - an increase of 135% compared to 2016. IHS now reveals that in Q3 2016 SDC flexible AMOLED revenue reached over $1 billion for the first time ever.

According to IHS, SDC has a market share of 31.8% from the total display market, followed by Japan Display (15.4%) and LGD (13.1%). SDC's good performance was mostly accredit to its OLED business, and specifically its flexible OLED business.

IHS says that flexible display shipments (mostly OLEDs) will reach 139 million units in 2017 (or 3.8% of the total display market) - an increase of 135% compared to 2016 (59 million units). In 2023 IHS sees shipments of 560 million flexible displays.

In 2017, flexible OLEDs will comprise 20% of the total OLED display market. The growth in flexible OLED adoption will be lead by smartphones - and especially Apple's next-gen iPhone. In 2016 76% of flexible OLEDs ended up in smartphones - and the remainder were used in smartwatches (mostly in Apple's Watch, probably). Next generation flexible OLED applications, including tablets, VR devices, automotive displays and OLED TVs are not expected to be significant until 2023.

Market analysts from Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) estimate that the market for OLED deposition equipment will reach new heights in Q4 2016 and Q1 2017, followed by even more expanded spending in Q3 2017.

The OLED deposition (evaporation + printing) equipment spending will exceed $2.5 billion on 2017 - rising over 100% from 2016.

UBI Research is seeing increasing demand for OLED in smartphones - especially for flexible OLEDs. The market analysts at UBI estimate that the market share of OLED technologies in the smartphone display market will rise from 16% to over 62% in 2016.

UBI sees most investments in OLED capacity increase in the future going into flexible OLEDs - and by 2021 flexible OLEDs panels will represent about 70% of the total smartphone display OLED market.