According to Newzoo, there were over a billion phones with OLED screens on the market in July 2018, up 41% from 720 million in July 2016. 30.4% of all active smartphones in July 2018 featured OLED, compared to 26.2% in July 2016. China accounted for 258 million OLED handsets in July 2018 (25.4%). The US had the second-largest number of OLED smartphones, with a global share of 9.8%, down from 9.9% in July 2016.
Despite OLED’s growing popularity, 62.5% of all active smartphones had an LCD display in July 2018, in part due to the popularity of low- and mid-spec smartphones in markets such as India, where 67.1% of all active smartphones featured LCD screens, and the large number of older iPhones still in use across the world.
Samsung smartphones accounted for 70.5% of phones with OLED displays, down from 80.6% in July 2017 and 87% in July 2016. Oppo’s share grew from 4.6% in July 2016 to 9.3% in July 2018, while Vivo’s increased from 3.5% in July 2016 to 8.7% in July 2018. Apple, which first adopted the tech in last year’s iPhone X, accounted for 5.3% of all OLED phones in July 2018.
Analyst Comment
We don’t know NewZoo and so are not completely sure about the quality of its data, but it doesn’t look unreasonable to us and a look at the installed base is an interesting way to look at things. In the end, though, it’s probably more interesting than useful. After all, there are no new applications or media types that are enabled by the use of OLEDs rather than LCDs. At, least, I don’t know of any! (BR)
