IDTechEx

IDTechEx released a new OLED display market report, and the company estimates that OLED revenues will reach $25.5 billion in 2018 and will grow to $30.72 billion in 2019.

The largest sector in the OLED industry is smartphones - with a 88% share of the total OLED revenues. The second largest sector is OLED TVs - with a 8% revenue market share (but a 27% display area market share).

Analyst firm IDTechEx has just released their new market forecasts for OLED displays. IDTechEx expects the market will reach nearly $1.6 billion this year and will grow to $57 billion in 2026.

For the last two years, the company has correctly predicted that plastic OLED and flexible OLED would be the major trend in displays. In the latest report, IDTechEx has revised their market forecast upwards based on the planned increase in production capacity.

IDTechEx released a new report on OLED lighting, in which it is forecasted (this is the optimistic scenario, though) that the OLED lighting market will reach more than $1.8 billion in 2025 at the panel level. IDTechEx is optimistic about OLED lighting in the long term - because "OLED lighting exhibits key characteristics of a disruptive technology".

According to IDTechEx, OLED lighting, compared to LED lighting, is under performing and is over priced. But OLED lighting can create new markets that value large areas emission, light-weight and flexibility.

According to IDTechEx, the market for printed and flexible electronics in the automotive industry will grow from around $400 million in 2016 to over $5.5 billion in 2026. The market will be driven mostly by OLED technologies and in-mould electronics.

If we look at OLED specifically, the OLED automobile market will grow from around $150 million in 2016 to about $500 million in 2018. The OLED lighting market will still be small - only around $25 million in 2018. OLED displays will of course be much more popular.

IDTechEx released a new report (Barrier Layers for Flexible Electronics 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts) in which they look at the future encapsulation market - the emerging technologies and the application needs.

IDTechEx sees the market for flexible encapsulation layers rising to $850 million in 2026 - mainly from quantum dots enhanced LCDs and flexible OLEDs - and also from flexible photovoltaics.

IDTechEx Research says that the flexible encapsulation (barrier) market for flexible devices (such as displays, but not only) will reach over $184 by 2020. IDTechEx sees next-gen single-layer encapsulation solutions to capture a part of the market in the future.

IDTechEx also takes a look at two specific technologies. Flexible glass is not seen to become the solution of choice in the short to medium terms due to the fragility and the fact that it cannot be stressed out of axis - and extreme flexibility can be a problem. Flexible glass is seen to be the best choice for a substrate material, though.

IDTechEx Research have recently revised its forecast for OLED displays - saying that glass-based OLEDs are not growing as fast as they expected (mostly because of Samsung's disappointing high-end AMOLED mobile phone sales) while the company is more optimistic regarding the flexible OLED market.

IDTechEx sees the glass-based AMOLED display market reaching $22.7 billion in 2022. The company's earlier estimate was $28.2 billion in the same year. The flexible OLED market will grow from $1.5 billion in 2015 to almost $3 billion in 2016 and over $16 billion in 2020. Most of those panels will be used in mobile phones. Note that the chart above does not include all flexible OLED applications (for example automotive applications).

IDTechEx posted a very interesting analysis of the OLED lighting market, in which they see the OLED market growing very slowly - it will remain smaller than $80 million until 2017. The market will start picking up to reach $840 million in 2022 - still a very small slice of the global lighting market.

IDTechEx says that OLED technology is very slow to close up to performance and cost gap to LED based lighting. In addition, following the recent Philips OLED BU sale to OLEDworks (and Panasonic decision to dissolve its OLED lighting activity back in March 2014), the only two major companies left in the OLED market is LG Chem and Konica Minolta.

IDTechEx estimates that the barrier (encapsulation) layers for flexible electronics market will reach over $200 million by 2024. This will be driven mostly by flexible OLED displays for phones, tablets and wearables. Following is details regarding the different technologies adopted by Samsung, LG and others.

Samsung is using Vitex's multilayer thin-film encapsulation (TFE) using three layers (this is a new achievement, up until now they had to use at least 6 layers). While Samsung will still use this technology for its current and next-gen displays, Samsung is also considering other encapsulation deposition technologies, including Veeco's FAST-ALD and Universal Display's UniversalBarrier.

IDTechEx released a new OLED lighting report (OLED Lighting Opportunities 2014-2025) in which they forecast that the OLED lighting market will remain small until 2019 (below $200 million - by the panel level) but will then start growing until it reaches $1.9 billion by 2025.

IDTechEx estimates that the architectural, hospitality and shop segments will be the first to grow, as in these markets the design parameter counts the most. Automotive is also promising, but lifetime and reliability issues has to be resolved first.