Reports from Korea say that Samsung is talking about using an LCD display in the upcoming Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 mobile phones - mostly in an attempt to reduce costs. Samsung is facing competition from lower-cost Android phones and need to lower the cost of their phones.
Samsung Galaxy S4
Samsung started adopting AMOLED displays in their high-end mobile phones years ago, but whenever people start discussing the next one, there are always rumors that they will switch back to LCD. It happened with the Note 3 and with the GS4. As we know, both phones use Super AMOLED panels.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Samsung repeatedly said that the future of high-end displays is OLED. Just last month, during Samsung's Analyst-Day, it was made clear that Samsung will continue to adopt OLED displays, and in fact they are gearing up to start adopting flexible panels (which Samsung estimates will reach 40% penetration in mobile phones by 2018).
However, we do know that currently AMOLEDs are more expensive than LCD (a large 5" AMOLED costs about 25% more than a comparable LCD) and it is expected that SDC will face supply issues soon as their OLED capacity will not be able to meet demand. So I guess Samsung will continue to offer several different phone models, and some will indeed adopt LCD. For example the GS4 Active uses a 5" Full-HD LCD. Hopefully there will also be a GS5 variant with a flexible OLED.
Comments
Maybe Samsung needs the capacity to produce OLED screen for 10+" tablets?
This rumor circulates prior to the new release of the Galaxy phone every year now. Just like the constant rumor that the iPhone will have an oled display prior to the release of a new version. This all means nothing. Just page clicks for a lot of websites. Please go back to the Samsung Investor conference of few weeks ago, when they stated oled is the way forward. We also see many Samsung variants of the flagship model that come with lcd. They release 30 or 40 smart phones a year. Not all have amoleds. This is no news.
I would probably add that I doubt PPG would be expanding in Ohio if they thought there wasn't high confidence of extending explosive growth in oled capex/utilization. Daewoo Research also doesn't confirm any issues with oled capex/utlization. Given the desire to expand oled into tablets and limited oled capacity perhaps the need to supply both does allow for extending more volume for high end lcd based smart phones to free up enough oled capacity to offer high end oled tablets. Trade offs between tablets and phones could explain the conflicting reports.