A report from Korea suggests that SDC has transferred around 500 of its engineers from its large-area OLED development division, or about 30% of them, to its divisions that focus on small and medium-sized AMOLED development.

Samsung tri-folding AMOLED prototype

According to the report, the main reason for SDC's change of priorities is due to the need to remain competitive with Chinese-based OLED makers that are offering OLED panels at low costs. Samsung estimates that it is ahead of its Chinese competitors by only a year or a year and half, and it is just a matter of time until Chinese companies catch up with South Korea makers (SDC and LGD).

According to UBI Research, the OLED tablet panel market is set to grow quickly, more than doubling between 2024 (12 million units expected) to 2028 (28.4 million). That's a CAGR of 24.1%.

UBI says that the market in 2023 was only 1.8 million panels - so growth in 2024 will be dramatic (almost 7X), mostly thanks to Apple's adoption of OLEDs in some of its iPad modules (expected to be announced next month). Samsung will produce 11" panels for Apple, while LGD will produce larger 12.9" panels. 

Omdia released its small and medium (9-inch and lower) AMOLED market share information for 2023, saying that even though Samsung's market share was lower than 50% for the first time, it stills leads the market by a large margin, with a 43% market share. 

Samsung is followed by BOE (15%), LG Display (10%), Visionox (9%) and Tianma (8%). The total market reached 842 million units, a growth of 11% over 2022. Omdia says that the China-based OLED makers have been expanding their capacity and improving the quality of the produced panels, and are securing orders from domestic smartphone brands. 

China-based CEOLED launched a new interactive navigator robot, the RK-O55-LTPA, that sports a 55" transparent OLED display.

The robot is designed to create a new to engage with digital content, in public spaces. It offers a 8-hour battery life, intelligent navigation capabilities, and more. 

Towards the end of 2023, Seoul's Metropolitan Government has initiated a new pilot test at Myeong-dong Station that offers an AI-powered translation service for tourists that enables them to communicate with the subway staff through a transparent 55" LG OLED display.

The pilot was successful, and Seoul's Metro expanded the service to 11 stations, throughout Seoul. This is one of the first useful applications of transparent OLED displays, and it is great to see it expanded in Korea. We do not know whether there are any plans to roll out more such displays in Korea.

According to reports from Korea, LG Display requested Samsung Electronics to use its WOLED panels on the same tier as SDC's QD-OLED panels, and Samsung will use both panel technologies in its S90D OLED TV series. Samsung will likely not disclose the actual panel technology to the consumer, and will likely decide on the panel technology per region.

The Samsung S90D will offer 42-, 48-, 55-, 65-, 77- and 83-inch panels. SDC only makes 55, 65, and 77-inch QD-OLED panels, and so in these sizes both QD-OLEDs and WOLEDs will be used. For the 42-, 48- and 83- models Samsung will only use WOLEDs.

LG Display says it plans to issue new shares, and raise around $970 million USD. The company plans to invest this capital in its OLED business, to meet the demand for advanced displays.

LG Display's strategic plan is to increase WOLED (large-area) display production by 20% compared to 2023. It also plans to increase its small and medium sized AMOLED business, but it seems LGD has not yet committed to expand production capacity further.

LG Display says that its WOLED TV and gaming displays have been awarded UL's low-plastic verification, given to products in which the plastic usage accounts to less than 5% of their total weight.

LGD says that its 65-inch OLED TV panel contains about 4% plastic content, about 905 lower than to a 65" LCD panel. In addition, by substituting key components with easily recyclable materials, LG Display has increased the recyclability of parts to as high as 92.7% at disposal.

Samsung announced that in 2023 it retained its market-leading position in the TV mraket, with a 30.1% market share (revenues). The company also disclosed that it sold 1.01 million OLED TVs in 2023 - mostly QD-OLED TVs, and some WOLED TVs as well.

Samsung quotes Omdia saying that it had a 22.7% market share in the OLED TV Market (by revenue), which is pretty impressive, as the company is relatively very new to this market.

Taiwan-based PC cases and accessory maker Lian Li is showing a new motorized gaming desk with a built-in  30-inch transparent OLED display.

The DK-07, currently in prototype stage, adopts LG Display's1366x768 transparent WOLED display. The desk is also a PC case. It's not clear what is the use case for the transparent display - the company is saying it can be a secondary display for your computer - and it is also showing a demo in which the transparent OLED displays ocean waves to create a nice effect. The display does not cover the entire desk area, as you can see in the image above.