BOE

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).

UBI Research released its latest foldable OLED shipments forecast, saying that it expects the market to grow from 27.4 million units in 2024 to 52.7 million 2028.

The market is dominated by Samsung Display, which shipped 13.4 million foldable OLEDs in 2023, and holds a 61% market. Samsung is followed by BOE (6.2 million, growing 3X from 2022), TCL CSOT (1.1 million) and Visionox (1.1 million). UBI expects Samsung Display to remain the clear leader in this market as it is the sole supplier to Samsung Electronics - and it is also expected that Samsung will be the exclusive supplier to Apple's future foldable iPhones.

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. 

A report from China suggests that Samsung will not produce any AMOLEDs for the upcoming Apple iPhone SE 4, as the Korean maker asked for around $30 per unit (6.1-inch) which was too high for Apple. Apple apparantly wanted to pay only $25, and it is estimated that BOE will supply most of the units, with some orders perhaps going to Tianma.

According to reports, Samsung estimated that it will not be able to make a profit in this project and decided to stop the negotiations when Apple insisted on a low price.

According to reports, BOE has commercialized a new tandem OLED architecture, that enabled an improvement of 40% in power consumption and a 600% increase in display lifetime. 

As you can see from the teaser poster above, Chinese smartphone maker Honor will release the first phone to adopt the new panel, the Honor Magic 6 Ultimate, next week on March 18th.

Market research firm Omdia says that display production equipment sales will rebound in 2024 and reach $7.7 billion (154% over 2023), and will grow slowly in the near future, mainly driven by 8.6-Gen OLED production lines (used to make IT displays).

Omdia says that the new 8.6-Gen OLED fab require novel technologies, which results in high equipment costs. In 2024, 32% of all spending ($2.4 billion) will be for Samsung's A6 line, a large investment for a 15,000 monthly subtrates fab. BOE's investment in its upcoming B16 flexible 8.6-Gen line will be even higher - by 18% due to the backplane choice (LTPO over Samsung's oxide-TFT A6).

BOE Group says that profits in 2023 dropped almost 70% compared to 2023, as demand for displays is low. BOE says that its profit in 2023 will be in the range of 2.3 to 2.5 billion yuan (around $324 to $350 million USD). Including some nonrecurring items, the company expects to report a net loss of $77 - $100 million USD in 2023 (that's around 70% lower than the loss in 2022).

BOE says that its LCD business was more profitable in 2023 - which likely means that its OLED business is still incurring losses. BOE updates that it shipped almost 120 million flexible AMOLED displays in 2023 (in October it said it sold over 100 million).

BOE demonstrated a new rollable AMOLED display at CES 2024, a dual-slidable display, that opens up on both sides.

When closed, the display is 13.6" in size, and when fully opened, it is 16.8". BOE did not disclose any more details.