UBI Research says that shipments of medium and large area OLED panels (which the company defines as 10 inches and up) will reach 26.1 million units in 2022. The market is set for fast growth, and shipments will reach 69.5 million units by 2027.

The main application by revenue will be TV panels, over the whole projected period, and OLED TV panel shipments will reach 14.8 million units in 2027, and generate $9.18 billion in sales.

According to UBI Research, Samsung Display has decided to produce QD-OLED panels at its upcoming 8.7-Gen A5 production line. The company IT display strategy will be to produce QD-OLED panels for monitor application (27-inch displays, at first) and tandem RGB panels for smaller IT displays (tablets, laptops).

A 34-inch QD-OLED monitor (Dell Alienware)

Samsung is looking for design wins with Apple for both its display architectures - the larger QD-OLED panels for Apple's monitors and the smaller sized panels for its tablets.

UBI Research estimates hat shipments of OLED panels for IT applications (tablets, monitors and laptops) will reach 48.8 million units by 2027, growing from around 9.5 million units in 2022 (a CAGR of 39%).

In 2022-2024, the main application for OLED panels is in laptops, but this will change from 2025 and onwards as tablets will also become a dominant applications (as Apple will start adoping OLEDs in its high-end iPads).

OLED makers are gearing up to increase production of IT OLED panels, used in laptops, monitors and tablets. Towards that, analysts expects over 10 8.5-Gen OLED lines under consideration now in the industry. This drive is led by Samsung Display that confirmed is is building a 8-Gen (2200x2500 mm) OLED production line, that will begin production in 2024.

A 8-Gen (or actually 8.5-Gen) fab uses 2200x2500mm glass substrates. According to a new report in Korea, Samsung actually decided to adopt a larger glass - a 8.7-Gen 2290x2620 mm. The ~10cm increase will increase production efficiency by around 9%, but this means that current 8.5-Gen LCD equipment that Samsung hoped to use will not be usable any more.

Last Month Samsung Display confirmed that Samsung is now building a 8-Gen (2200x2500 mm) OLED production line, that will begin production in 2024.

It is expected that the new line will mostly produce panels for IT devices (laptops and tablest) and also for automotive applications. Many believe that these applications will adopt tandem stack structure to increase brightness and lifetime. According to a new report, Samsung's new line will adopt a single-stack structure, and not a dual-stack one.

UBI Research estimates that sale revenues of medium and large OLED displays (UBI defines these from 10-inch and up) rose 22.9% in Q2 2022 compared to the previous quarter and 11.2% compared to last year - to reach $1.67 billion.

In term of sales, UBI estimates that total shipments in 2022 will reach 26.3 million units. Most of the growth in 2022 will come from laptop displays - where shipments almost doubled in the second quarter to 2.18 million units.

Following strong demand for IT devices, and Samsung's success in the OLED laptop market, OLED makers have began to plan building new OLED production lines specifically for IT applications: laptops, tablets and monitors.

Several OLED makers, including Samsung, LG and BOE, are considering building 8.5-Gen production lines for this market. In fact DSCC estimated that there are 11 such lines under development right now. But it turns out that this is not so simple as designing the evaporation equipment for larger substrates is a challenge.

DSCC says that global OLED revenues in Q1 2022 were around $9.5 billion, the same as in Q1 2021, even though unit shipments declined 4%.

Smartphone remained the leading OLED application, with a 79% revenue share, even though shipments decreased 8% (and revenues decreased 3%). The second largest application by shipments is wearables (16% in Q1 2022 by shipments and in 6% market share by revenues).

According to a report from Korea, BOE is in talks with China-based smartphone producer Honor regarding the supply of tandem (dual-stack) OLED displays to be used in Honor's smartphones.

BOE hopes that its tandem OLED panels will reduce power consumption by around 30% compared to a single-stack OLED display, which will enable Honor to adopt a smaller battery and a thinner design. Both companies hopes to be able to introduce the panels and the smartphones that use it by the end of 2022.

Back in 2020 we reported that Apple is worried about lifetime and burn-in issues in AMOLED displays in tablet applications, and Apple decided to adopt a tandem OLED architecture in the displays it will eventually adopt in future iPad devices.

LG Display already developed such panels for automotive applications, and according to reports it is developing a tandem LTPO AMOLED display for Apple, aiming to supply these to Apple at around 2024. According to a new report, Samsung Display has launched a project to develop tandem OLED panels as it also hopes to supply panels for Apple's future iPads.