What Display Daily thinks: This is an easy one. There’s some notion that Korea’s going to maintain its lead, however slim, in OLED over China because of its greater experience and better quality. Uh, no. Maybe Chinese competitors won’t get to the same level as Korean manufacturers (LG/Samsung) but they don’t have to. They just have to be good enough, and if the price is right, who cares?
Apple? Okay, Apple. Then who?
OLED prices are going to go down in 2024 and they will go down much more than anyone is anticipating right now. There, I said it.
BOE Makes Two Major Announcements About OLED
The first announcement is a week or so old in the Chinese press but is now making the rounds of the western world. BOE’s own announcement said that it plans to construct one of the world’s first 8.6th generation AMOLED production lines in Chengdu’s High-tech Western District, Sichuan Province.
The investment is 63 billion yuan ($8.9 billion) for a facility covering an area of 925,200 square meters, designed to produce 32,000 pieces per month of glass substrate, primarily targeting high-end touch screens for laptops and tablets.
BOE positions the project as standing out for its emphasis on medium-sized OLED IT products, as well as being a significant economic driver for the region, expected to create approximately 8,200 new jobs. The construction of the project will unfold in two phases over approximately 34 months.
Within a week, Universal Display Corporation (UDC) announced its relationship with BOE through its subsidiary UDC Ireland Limited, inking long-term agreements for the supply and licensing of its proprietary phosphorescent OLED materials and technology to BOE.
From a Korean perspective, there are fears that Korean display makers like Samsung and LG may face another fierce price war with Chinese companies like BOE as they ramp up OLED production and aim to take market share. It doesn’t seem to help that BOE’s planned $8.84 billion investment in an 8.6-gen OLED production facility is almost 3 times what Samsung invested.
Competition over securing OLED orders from major customers like Apple is heating up and there are concerns that BOE and other Chinese firms’ larger manufacturing scale from bigger substrate sizes may allow them to surpass Korean production capacity in the future despite Korea currently having a technology edge.
So, Korea’s display titans are left to leverage Apple to maintain premium orders and to invest in micro-displays, and pursuing higher levels of investment to meet the rising competitive threat.
