21% of the smartphone display market was taken by Full HD smartphone panels in Q3’15 – largely due to the increase in AMOLED display adoption by Samsung and other vendors, says IHS. Unit shipments also increased thanks to rising demand from the Chinese market, and the popularity of the iPhone 6S Plus. AMOLED displays rose from a 10% smartphone display shipment share in Q3’14 to 18% in Q3’15.
AMOLED technology has been Samsung’s main differentiator for its Galaxy smartphone for the past six years. However, to expand adoption Samsung Display has changed its smartphone display strategy, and is now selling to external customers.
Beginning in Q2, smartphone brands including Oppo, Gionee, Lenovo and Huawei began to use AMOLED technology. Other products are also using the displays, such as Google’s Nexus 6P (built by Huawei), Microsoft’s Lumia 950 XL and the Blackberry Priv.
“2015 will be a banner year for AMOLED as the technology will soon be included in high-end smartphones from many other companies,” said IHS senior analyst David Hsieh. “The simpler structure and better picture performance of AMOLED screens may even encourage Apple to consider adopting the technology in the future”.
Shipments of 5″+ displays surpassed those of smaller units for the first time in Q3. While QoQ shipments of these displays rose 21%, to 247 million units, shipments of sub-5″ screens fell 6% to 156 million units.
5″ smartphone panels experienced the highest growth of any size category. Shipments rose from 93 million in Q2 to 104 million in Q3: the first time these displays have exceeded 100 million units in a single quarter. Thanks to the iPhone 6S Plus and other new models manufactured in China, 5.5″ panels grew from 65.6 million units to 79.8 million.
Screen sizes of 6″+ have not been as popular as those in the 5″ category, so growth there has been marginal.
