OLED open hot… Samsung·LG accelerates investment expansion

The dominant outlook is that this year’s OLED market will grow more than last year. Accordingly, the expansion of OLED investment by domestic panel makers such as Samsung and LG is also accelerating.

According to the industry on the 16th, LG Display recently entered into a business agreement (MOU) with the People’s Committee of Hai Phong City in Vietnam and invested 750 million dollars (about 838.5 billion won) to expand the facilities of the local OLED module factory.

This investment is interpreted as a dimension to expand the assembly production capacity according to the demand for OLED panels that are increasing every year.

This is because OLED TV sales volume of LG Electronics, a major customer, is increasing, and manufacturers of OLED TVs such as Chinese companies are increasing. In addition, the proportion of OLED panels installed in the smartphone field is increasing. LG Display is expanding its small and medium-sized P-OLED business by supplying OLED panels to Apple from the iPhone 11 series.

LG Display is scheduled to start full-scale expansion work next month as early as next month and start operating in earnest from May.

Samsung Display is also building a small and medium-sized OLED module factory from the beginning of last year to supply parts to Samsung Electronics’ Noida smartphone factory in India, which was completed in 2018. After establishing a corporation in India in July 2019, it began construction of a small and medium-sized OLED module factory from the beginning of last year. The investment amount is up to 7575 million dollars (about 8676 billion won).

It is reported that this plant has also started working at the end, and it is expected to be fully operational during the first half of this year. This factory is expected to contribute to strengthening the Indian dominance of Samsung Electronics’ smartphones by mainly producing mid- and low-priced OLEDs. Samsung Electronics ranked second with 21% of the market share in the Indian smartphone market last year. The gap with No. 1 Xiaomi is 5%p.

As panel makers are actively investing in OLED, and as OLED panels are rapidly spreading to laptops and electronic devices in addition to TVs and smartphones, the size of the OLED market is expected to grow significantly this year.

According to market research firm Omdia, global OLED panel sales are expected to reach 38 billion dollars, a 28% increase this year from 29.7 billion dollars last year.

In particular, Omdia predicts that OLED sales related to electronic devices will increase 95% compared to the previous year.

Omdia said, “After the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19), the importance of eye health has increased as consumers spend longer in front of the screen.” The characteristics of the panel will be more noticeable.”