China-based All View Cloud consultancy says that OLED TV sales in China will reach 380,000 units in 2019, (up from 210,000 in 2018 and 120,000 in 2017) and will rise to 800,000 units in 2020. By 2021 or 2021 the sales will surpass 2 million units - which will make China the world's largest market for OLED TVs.
According to AVC, Skyworth is leading the Chinese OLED TV market with 46% of total OLED sales in 2017, followed by LG (16%) and Sony (14.9%). The penetration of OLED TVs in China is relatively low, compared to the US, Europe and Japan and there's much room for growth.
Total TV sales in China reached 47.74 million units in 2018 - which means that even at 800,000 units in 2020 OLED TVs will grab a 1.6% market share.
The Skyworth Group is hoping that its OLED TVs will enable it to lead the domestic TV market in China, and the Chairman and President of Skyworth-RGB Electronic (a subsidiary of Skyworth Group) says that the company will invest 10 million Yuan (almost $1.5 million) to advertise and promote OLED TVs in China. In September 2018 it was reported that Skyworth aims to expand its OLED TV module capacity from 300,000 yearly units to a million yearly units. Skyworth will spend $73 million on that factory expansion.
A few days ago LG Display (who is still the world's only OLED TV panel producer) announced that the Guangzhou will start production in August 2019. The initial capacity of this new fab will be 60,000 monthly substrates, which will almost double LGD's total OLED TV capacity.
LGD hopes that the new Chinese fab will enable it to cut production costs due to lower wages and government subsidies. DSCC estimates that the subsidies will reduce LGD's depreciation costs by 65%. An unexpected bonus may be that this fab could enable LGD to circumvent Japan's recent export ban on Korea.
