TCL CSOT

TCL CSoT has announced several times in the past that it plans to start producing OLED display using an inkjet printing process by the end of 2024, and a new report from Korea updates the latest status from the company.

TCL CSoT originally said it will produce OLED TV panels, but later updated its plans to produce IT displays. According to the Elec, the company has decided that its first panel to be produced is a 21.6" monitor displays for medical devices. The company has unveiled this panel in SID 2024 - it has a 4K resolution and a peak brightness of 350 nits. 

OLED TVs offer excellent image quality, outperforming LCDs with superb contrast, excellent and vivid color reproduction and fast refresh rates. In addition, OLEDs enable thin and efficient TVs. OLED TV production has been increasing up until a year ago, reaching a potential capacity of around 10 million units. This is impressive, but considering the entire global TV market that amounts to around 250 million units, OLEDs represent only around 2.5% of the total market (it is important to note that OLEDs tend to be produced in large sizes and carry a much higher average selling price compared to LCDs).

But OLED TV production capacity growth has declined in recent years. In this article we will shortly detail the history of OLED TV production, and look at potential paths towards increased penetration in the future. More details and into the future of OLED technologies and OLED TVs is included in the OLED Toolbox.

A bit of history: in 2013, both Samsung and LGD started producing OLED TV panels. Samsung chose the straightforward RGB side-by-side architecture, in which there are three sub-pixels, with red, green and blue OLED emitters. LG chose its own WRGB (or WOLED) architecture (the IP was acquired from Kodak in 2009) which uses four white OLED subpixels (made from yellow and blue OLED subpixels). Both companies released 55" FHD OLED TVs, priced at over $10,000 per unit. It soon became clear that Samsung's approach was not scalable, while LGD managed to enter mass production quickly and reduce prices dramatically within a few years to compete with the dominant LCD TV technology.

The Chairman of the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, sent a letter to the US Secretary of Defense, saying that the US should place both BOE and Tianna on the DoD 1260H blacklist as Chinese military companies.

In his letter, Mr. Moolenaar says that by using government support, the Chinese has taken over the display industry, and are already leading both the LCD and OLED markets (which is indeed mostly true). As these two companies have close ties to the Chinese government and military, this, according to the letter, poses a big risk to US and its allies.

As we reported last month, TCL CSoT officially announced that it has agreed to buy LG Display's last LCD production line in Guangzhou, China, for $1.5 billion (10.8 billion Yuan). 

TCL CSoT will acquire 80% of LG Display's 8.5-Gen LCD production line, and 100% of its LCD module line in Guangzhou. The two companies plan to complete the deal by the end of March 2025. LG's LCD production line has a capacity to produce 180,000 TV panels per month, most of these sized 55" and up (about 6% of the total LCD panel market), and had a net profit of $85 million last year over $900 million in revenues. The module factory can produce 2.3 million units per month. The two factories serve customers such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Skyworth, and more. 

DSCC says that display makers are increasing their OLED CapEx investment as demand for OLED displays is on the rise. DSCC has raised its forecast for OLED spending by 14% compared to their previous update, while they retain their previous forecast for LCD, OLED microdisplay and microLED display equipment spending. 

Between 2020 and 2027, OLED display makers will invest $44 billion in new production equipment. The spending on OLED equipment will keep growing year after year from 2023 to 2027, reaching $6.5 billion in 2027, as OLED penetration in the smartphone, tablet and laptop market is increasing, and fab utilization is increasing too, encouraging display makers to add capacity.

LG Display has decided to sell its last LCD production line, as the company plans to completely focus on OLED display technology. TCL CSoT will buy the fab, in Guangzhou, China, for about $1.5 billion.

The two companies hope to complete the transaction by the end of 2024. The fab, originally built in 2014, produces LCD TV panels. 

DSCC says that foldable OLED shipments increased 46% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to last year, to reach almost 4 million units. 

BOE was leading the market in Q1 2024, with a market share of 48% (up from 43% in Q1 2023). The two leading foldable smartphone models were Huawei's Mate X5 and Pocket 2, using panels supplied by BOE. In fact Huawei had a market share of 55% in the foldable smartphone market.

Omdia says that China's OLED makers have been making rapid progress with their foldable OLED capabilities, to the point that in the first half of 2024, China's production of foldable OLED panels will surpass Korea's.

Omdia predicts that in the first half of 2024, Samsung Display will produce 5.7 million panels, while China's producers will produce 6.4 million panels. The market is set to grow quickly, from 10.7 million units in 2021 to 30 million panels in 2024. The market leader remains Samsung (47% in 2024H1), followed by BOE (40%), Visionox (9%) and TCL CSoT (4%).

TCL CSOT demonstrated its latest displays, technologies and prototypes at Display Week 2024. The company is focused on inkjet printing technologies, and a lot of the displays on show were indeed printed.

So first up, we TCL demonstrated a 14" 2880x1800 400 nits 30-120Hz ink-jet printed LTPO AMOLED display. The display is produced on a glass substrate, with thin film encapsulation (a 'hybrid OLED').

As OLED display makers are racing to launch IT AMOLED displays (for laptops, monitors and tablets), there has been recent reports that TCL CSoT has decided to build a 8-Gen AMOLED line, in a 63 billion Yuan (about $8.7 billion USD) investment.

TCL CSoT issued a statement that says that this report is inaccurate, and the company has not made a decision yet and does not have an investment plan.