UBI - Page 7

UBI Research is seeing increasing demand for OLED in smartphones - especially for flexible OLEDs. The market analysts at UBI estimate that the market share of OLED technologies in the smartphone display market will rise from 16% to over 62% in 2016.

UBI sees most investments in OLED capacity increase in the future going into flexible OLEDs - and by 2021 flexible OLEDs panels will represent about 70% of the total smartphone display OLED market.

UBI says that in Q3 2016, shipments of AMOLED panels for smartphones reached 96 million. This is an increase of 148% over Q3 2015 and a 103% increase over Q2 2016.

UBI sees AMOLED shipments increasing in a CAGR of 41% from 2016 to 2020, to reach 1.4 billion units in 2020. Flexible OLEDs will amount to about 60% of all AMOLED shipped by 2020.

UBI Research predicts that OLED TVs produced using a solution-based process will start to appear in the market in 2019. Evaporation-processed WOLED TVs will still be the market leader with a 85% market share (of the total OLED TVs) in 2021.

Solution-based OLED emitters are not as efficient or long-lasting as evaporation OLEDs, but ink-jet printing will enable to reduce costs compared to evaporation, and for OLED TVs this can make business sense, especially as a WOLED (WRGB) structure is less efficient than a direct-emission RGB architecture. UBI sees solution-based OLEDs competing with WRGB OLEDs for the mid-range TV market, not the premium one.

UBI Research says that WOLED technology will lead the premium TV market from 2020 onwards. LCD will not be able to match the performance of OLED TVs at the high-end of the TV market, and solution-based OLED TVs and QD TVs will find it hard to penetrate the market as WOLED technology is one step ahead in commercialization.

According to UBI, in 2016 OLED TVs will grab a 16.7% share of the global premium TV market. In 2020, OLED TVs will lead that market with a 68.1% share.

UBI Research foresees the flexible AMOLED market rising from $4.9 billion in 2016 to $40.8 billion in 2020 - a CAGR of 70%. According to UBI, in 2020 around one billion flexible AMOLEDs will be produced.

UBI says that there is a high possibility that a foldable smartphone will be launched in 2017 to observe the market reaction - which means that it'll be a low-volume high-end product - there are still many challenges towards a foldable device.

UBI Research says that while virtually all flexible OLEDs used in smartphones today use an edge-type design (which UBI refers to as bezel-less), by next year Samsung will be able to use a flexible OLED to cover the entire smartphone screen.

Such bezel-less displays will grab an almost 20% market share in 2017 (out of all flexible OLED smartphones, that is) - and this will grow to over 50% by 2020. Foldable OLEDs will be the next step, and these will start to appear in 2019 - although UBI does not think foldable OLEDs will grab a meaningful market share even in 2020.

Market Analyst UBI Research estimates the flexible OLED shipments used by Apple iPhone will grow from 34 million panels in 2017 (in which Apple will, according to UBI, launch its first OLED phone) to 518 million panels in 2021 - surpassing Samsung Electronics that will sell 298 million flexible OLED smartphones.

This is a bold statement by UBI - especially as flexible OLEDs have been used by Samsung for years now with great success, and the company is actually planning to adopt foldable OLED displays in future devices - which may completely revolutionize the segment if successful.

In early 2016 UBI Research estimated that LG Display will produce 1.2 million OLED TV panels in 2016, and 8.1 million in 2020. But now UBI Research reduced those estimates by around 20-30% to 800,000-900,000 panels in 2016 and about 6 million in 2020.

The reason for this reduction is the fact that LG Display is producing more 65" panels then estimated. We have heard this several times before - LGD sees larger than expected demand for 65" OLED TVs, and is producing more larger panels as a result. Because the company's total area production capacity is limited, this means that the total amount of produced panel is lower

UBI Research says that 4" to 6" AMOLED panels shipments will reach 318.8 million in 2016 - up 27% compared to 2015. The fast growth will continue to reach 505 million in 2017, 902 million in 2018, 1.17 billion 2019 and over 1.35 billion in 2020.

Flexible OLEDs will lead this growth as the new displays will be increasingly adopted by display makers globally. In 2016, flexible OLEDs will amount to 22% of the OLED market, but this will grow to 56 in 2018.

UBI Research says that the OLED lighting market will grow rapidly in the near future (a CAGR of 66% in 2017-2025) to reach $1.6 billion in sales by 2020. LG Display will lead the market with a market share of 53% (in terms of revenue).

UBI estimates the OLED lighting market in 2016 at $114 million, and LGD's current market share is 15% (or $17 million in sales).