LG Display's CEO, Han Sang-Beom, says that LG expects to ship 600,000 OLED panels in 2015 and 1.5 million in 2016. The company wants to be the OLED leaders, and Han says they expect competition soon from Chinese, Korean and Japanese makers (he specifically mentions JOLED) but LG aims to lead from the start in this market.
LG Display says that the global high-end TV market is estimated at about 4 million sets, which means they actually aim to capture a 37.5% market share. This also means that even in 2016, LG sees OLEDs remaining in the "high-end" segment.
In September 2014 it was reported that LG Electronics internal OLED TV sales target is 800,000 TVs in 2015. This means that LGD's new 600,000 target for next year is quite a bit lower - considering the fact that the display maker also suppliers to other companies beside LG Electronics (such as Skyworth, Changhong, Konka, and in the future maybe to Japanese makers too)
Han comments on Quantum-Dot based LCDs, saying that QDs is just one of many ways to increase LCD's color range. He admitted that QD LCDs outperform OLEDs in terms of the color range, but he said that LG plans to increase OLED's color range to match that of QD TVs.
LG Display also privately unveiled new flexible (curved) OLEDs aimed for the automotive market. LG says they are meeting with major players in this market - and in fact they "already have 80 percent of clients locked down". LG says most automotive makers are preparing to release their innovative smart cars in 2020. Last year LG announced they signed flexible OLED supply deals with German automobile makers.
Do you know, which lower price end is attributed to the premium segment as seen by LG? This is more of personal interest, as I want to know, whether my price target for buying an OLED TV will be hit during this year.
With respect to the marketing strategy of LG:
To me it makes total sense to first adress the premium segment, as then you can charge a slight premium over LCD also in the middle segment.
If you start with OLED as commodity you will earn commodity margins, which by my expectation for the commodity TV panel business is around zero...