LG Display has told the Nikkei that it plans to boost its OLED TV panel output to 10 million by 2020 and Lee Sang-hoon, a Senior VP with the company, said that the number could even reach 20 million units as “consumers are willing to pay for better products”. The company also said that half of its sales in the $2,000 or more segment were OLED and the aim is for 70% this year.
Lee told the paper that it would invest $18 billion in OLED technology by 2020 and was looking to achieve 40% of its sales from OLED. Lee quoted data that the Japanese market was adopting OLED very strongly, with 92% of the premium TV market in Japan adopting OLED. Lee confirmed that Sony bought 200,000 OLED TV panels in 2017 and plan to buy 400,000 this year.
Analyst Comment
LG Display has done a lot of good things and it could certainly get to 10 milllion sets – less than 5% of the TV market, but 20 million might be a bit harder. We already know that Samsung is striking back with better technology, although the pricing we reported from Sony on its 2018 OLEDs suggests that LG has room to keep Samsung under pressure, as Samsung has good technical solutions, but there are some quite negative cost effects from its technology.
Consumers, as always, will be the real winners! (BR)
