Q3'07 OLED Display Revenues Disappoint as Samsung SDI's AMOLED Program Is Slow to Reach Full Production

In what was expected to be a strong quarter with Samsung SDI reaching their full production goal of 1.5 million AMOLED displays per month, the company barely reached the 100K mark down from 350K in Q2’07 as reported in DisplaySearch’s latest Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report.  The low production level left the OLED display industry with revenues of only US$78.3M in Q3’07 down 38% Y/Y and 31% Q/Q.  Shipments were 15.5M for the quarter, down 32% Y/Y and 22% Q/Q.  The low production for the industry was also impacted by LGE, one of the industry leaders, shifting resources from PMOLEDs to AMOLEDs and shipping only 310K units vs. 3.1M in the prior quarter and Sony with no AMOLED production as the company prepared to begin shipping the XEL-1, the world’s first AMOLED TV in December ’07.  The news was not all bad as:



  • RiTdisplay had a record quarter and led in revenues with US$31.0M and units with US$6.4M.

  • Pioneer was #2 in units and #3 in shipments, while Samsung SDI, the only company shipping both PMOLEDs and AMOLEDs, was #3 in units and #2 in shipments.

  • Samsung SDI has already upped its production and expects to ship >2M units in Q4’07, while RiTdisplay should continue its explosive performance with shipments of more than 7M units, a new record for one supplier.

  • Chi Mei EL also started production of AMOLED displays with volume of 16K, a number they expect to double in Q4’07.

  • MED joined eMagin as the only two companies shipping microdisplay-based OLEDs.



Samsung SDI was able to announce a number of design wins with the Japanese mobile phone carrier AU  announcing AMOLED main display mobile phones by Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Hitachi and Sanyo.  Previously, Samsung SDI announced design wins with Nokia and Kyocera.  The new AMOLED main displays are all in the 2.8 category, which should help the mobile phone makers recover the premium prices charged for AMOLED displays. 

Posted: Nov 28,2007 by Ron Mertens