The gist of it: chalk it up to the swirl of display chatter in The Elec that tends to be either skeptical of any threats to the local display industry, or ready to man all battle stations. The South Koreans have so much invested in OLED market dominance that the levels of paranoia will either enrich them or kill them from stress-related illnesses.
South Korean display equipment industry insiders are expressing skepticism over Chinese display panel maker HKC’s plans to invest in OLED display panels, according to The Elec. HKC has been in talks with South Korean equipment companies but has not shown signs of reorganizing an OLED team disbanded during the pandemic. HKC’s collaboration with JDI on eLEAP technology, which claims not to require fine metal masks for OLED panel production, remains unconfirmed. Furthermore, HKC reportedly lacks the oxide thin-film transistor (TFT) technology necessary for manufacturing large OLED panels.
To counterpoint this report, JDI thinks its OLED deposition process, eLEAP, is a game changer. HKC was said to have signed an agreement with JDI to adopt eLEAP for mass production of AMOLED displays, investing billions to build factories in China, and that’s a story that is less than a month old. Mass production was supposed to begin in 2025, according to OLED-Info, with initial applications in automotive displays and wearable devices.
The final strategic alliance agreement included the following items by June 2023:
- A long-term, comprehensive, and collaborative global strategic partnership to work together on eLEAP, a global innovation and industrialization center, and a high-end automotive display business.
- Joint planning and building of eLEAP fabs, targeting mass production in 2025.
- Working together to grow into a leading comprehensive high-end display solution provider, with long-term strategic targets for mid- to high-end displays:
- a. Wearables: Global No.1 in shipments and market share by 2027;
- b. Automotive: Global No.1 in shipments and market share by 2028;
- c. VR: Global No.1 in shipments and market share by 2028;
- d. Monitors: Global No.1 in shipments and market share by 2028;
- e. Notebooks & Tablets: Global No.3 in shipments and market share by 2028.
The Elec and its South Korean sources are less than convinced.
More than likely, as supply chains get shuffled around, as OLED’s present an existential threat to Chinese vendors, and US sanctions bite into capital investments into new technologies, companies are going to be positioning themselves through a variety of, so-called, strategic partnerships and ambitious joint ventures of the future. Everyone has to keep their options open in uncertain times, and juggle a number of suppliers not knowing who will be able to supply what and to whom. But, until the money leaves a company’s background and starts making its way to partners, or into new production lines, it’s just strategic PR.
