DSCC says that while it is too early indeed to talk about an OLED recovery from an equipment supplier point of view, the smartphone OLED market is set for substantial growth in the second half of 2018.
Samsung is seeing improved OLED fab utilization, and the company still has some unused capacity at its A4 fab. As the gap between rigid OLED and LCD has fallen to around $5, OLED adoption is rising. In addition, smartphone makers are increasingly using flexible OLEDs in high end devices.
DSCC also says that average OLED panel size will increase from 5.27 in early 2017 to 5.73 by the end of 2018. One of the reasons will be Apple's adoption of a 6.46 AMOLED for its iPhone XI+.
Interestingly, DSCC estimates that OLED production yields (of the entire industry) will fall from around 60% in 2016 to 53.9% in 2019. This is because new OLED fab tend to have lower yields than established ones, and the fact that flexible OLED yields are lower than rigid ones. Yields will improve in 2020 and 2021 - even though foldable OLED production will begin soon will result in lower yields compared to flexible displays.
