During an analyst meeting discussing year-end results, Universal Display executives coyly admitted that investments in IT may help to fuel display sales in 2022. So, are business buyers ever going to surpass consumers in terms of the square meters of displays they need? I got the sense that these executives were hearing positive murmurings about IT spending on OLED devices from their customers. Not that they wanted to bank anything on the promise of an uptick in business with so much uncertainty.
| Market Category | 2022 Shipments | 2022/2021 Growth | 2026 Shipments | 2026/2025 Growth | 2022-2026 CAGR |
| Consumer | 265.3 | -9.80% | 260.3 | 0.50% | -0.50% |
| Enterprise | 56.3 | -4.00% | 62.1 | 0.80% | 2.50% |
| Public Sector | 67.4 | -22.60% | 65.5 | 1.10% | -0.70% |
| SMB | 67.9 | -13.40% | 71.1 | 0.50% | 1.20% |
| Total | 456.8 | -11.90% | 459 | 0.60% | 0.10% |
Maybe people just need to find bright spots in the data to back up their optimism about the second half of this year seeing an upturn or, 2024 being a year when the display industry gets back to growth. Or, maybe, there’s more to it than that. There is ample evidence that business customers are going to continue to be investing in technology as part of an overall digital transformation that’s taking place across all industries. For many companies, that digital transformation has never been more necessary as they look for efficiencies in their operations and integrate more cloud services to reduce direct costs of ownership in their IT departments.
Displays in the enterprise are generally bigger than the one’s that smartphone-first consumers pursue. There’s more display real estate for less volume among business customers. That’s also the result of many more use cases in business whereas with a consumer it probably comes down to getting a new phone every two or three years or, a TV every 5 years. The term digital transformation is a bit of misnomer because it sounds like there is plenty of digital technology in businesses already but it goes beyond that, into how companies interact with suppliers and customers as part of one unified digital strategy connecting the entirety of a company’s operations.
During the pandemic, employees spent money on tablets, laptops and mobile phones due to remote work and even though we still some softening of demand in business sectors, who would have thought 4 years ago that tablets would selling at the pace they are today? There is no reason to assume that by 2024 we won’t start to hit a new refresh cycle driven by people going back to the office, and it’s not like there isn’t competition for labor in the market, even now, with all the so-called macroeconomic factors at play.
We have a generational shift happening in phones, tablets, and now, laptops, ito OLEDs. That means you get an OLED displays whether you want one. When it comes to these three device categories everyone is going to want it. Knowing all that, and the fact that we are still up from where we were prior to the pandemic, with some very clear indications that a bright spot in spending is in the enterprise and SMB segments, it sounds like a realistic thread of optimism to pursue. If you want people back in the office then give them a multi-display setup, I’m just saying, that’s a lot of productivity right there.
