Omdia (IHS) - Page 5

According to Omdia, Samsung Display has started to provide QD-OLED TV prototypes to potential customers - including Samsung Electronics, Sony and Panasonic. Samsung Display is on track to start mass production in Q3 2021.

Interestingly, Samsung Electronics is still not sure whether it will adopt QD-OLED TVs in 2021, as the company aims to focus on mini-LED panels in 2021, and may only release QD-OLED TVs in 2022.

Omdia (IHS Markit) updated its forecast for the 2020 OLED market - and the company now sees the market contracting 1.2%, to 465 million panels, as demand for high-end smartphones is falling.

In April 2020, Omdia saw an increase of 9% in demand for OLEDs - 512 million panels, up from 471 in 2019, even though it already forecasted a fall in demand for smartphone.

IHS Markit says that the rollable OLED market is finally starting to emerge, and will grow quickly but unit shipments will remain slow in the foreseeable future. IHS sees 100,000 rollable OLED displays shipped in 2022, growing to 1.3 million by 2026. The CAGR from 2019 to 2026 will be 167%.

Rollable OLEDs will remain a niche- the share of rollable OLEDs from all flexible OLEDs will be 0.2% in 2026. Foldable OLEDs will be a much larger market - reaching 71.3 million units in 2025.

Omdia says that the global foldable OLED display market will grow from 700,000 units to 3.9 million in 2020 (a 5X increase) - and will continue its fast growth to reach 73.1 million in 2025.

Omdia says that the main challenge of the foldable OLED market is the reliability of the displays - mainly the cover, the touch sensor and the polarizer films. Display makers will need to adopt new technologies such as ultrathin glass covers (UTG), touch sensors on TFE and color filters on TFE

Omdia (IHS Markit) says that even though global demand for smartphones in 2020 will drop 13% compared to 2019 due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the demand for smartphone AMOLED displays will increase by 9%. AMOLED penetration will rise sharply in 2020.

In 2020 513 million smartphone AMOLED panels will ship, up from 471 million in 2019. The growth will be entirely driven by flexible AMOLEDs which will see a 50% surge in production in 2020. Rigid OLED shipments will decline 12% in 2020.

Market research company Omdia (previous IHS Markit) have revised down its global TV outlook - and say that it expects only 3.5 million OLED TV units to ship in 2020. Omdia's previous estimate was 4.5 million units, and this too was decreased from its original forecast in late 2019 of 5.5 million.

The OLED TV is still growing (unlike the entire TV market which will shrink in 2020), but due to the CotonaVirus outbreak, LGD's plans to expand production will be delayed.

Towards the end of 2019 LG Display started to supply Apple with 6.1" film-touch OLED flexible displays for its 2020 iPhone, and IHS Markit now says that these shipments propelled LGD's OLED smartphone market share to 10.8% in Q4 2019 (up from only 2.1% in Q3 2019).

In fact LGD now says that mobile OLED revenues make up for 36% of its total revenues in Q4 - which is higher than its OLED TV revenues for the first time ever.

IHS Markit estimates that 1.1 million OLED TVs shipped in Q4 2019. This is the first time over 1 million OLED TVs were shipped in a quarter. Total OLED TV sales in 2019 reached 3 million units - a 1.3% of the total TV market.

LG Electronics is still the leader in the OLED TV market, with a market share of 53.9% (598,000 units). LG's market share is dropping as more and more companies join the OLED camp. China has become the world's largest OLED TV market (33% by units) - surpassing Korea (32.1%) for the first time in 2019.

LG Display originally planned to start producing OLED TV panels at its 8.5-Gen OLED fab in Guangzhou in October 2019, but LGD faced technical issues and production was delayed to Q1 2020. Last month LGD said it finally fixed its technical issues and production will start by the end of January 2020 - but here we are at the middle of February and production hasn't started yet.

LGD's original plan was to ship over 6 million OLED TV panels in 2020 - which include the smaller 48" OLED TV panels launched at CES 2020. It seems certain now that LGD will not be able to meet its goals. IHS also reduced its 2020 OLED TV production forecast from 5 million units to 4.5 million.

IHS says that smartwatch display shipments continue to rise, and reached 57 million units in Q3 2019. IHS expects total shipments in 2019 will reach 195 million units - up 31% from 2018 (149 million units).

IHS also revealed the breakdown by display maker. The leading producer by far is BOE Display, followed by LG Display (who produced all of Apple's OLED wearable displays in Q3 2019, but this is now changing) and then Truly.