Truly semiconductors

Truly International Holdings is a Hong-Kong headquartered display and electronics manufacturer with over four decades of history, a public company that trades in the HK stock exchange (HKEX: 00732). Truly mostly operates its display business through its subsidiary Truly Semiconductors.

The company is the world's 2nd largest small and medium display maker, operating LCD, PMOLED, and AMOLED fabs, serving automotive, smartphone, wearable, industrial, and medical markets.

Truly is one of the world's leading PMOLED maker, and it is also a small-scale AMOLED maker. In the mid-2010s, Truly had ambitious plans to expand its AMOLED production, but the company later effectively retreated from its large-scale AMOLED strategy, formally terminating its planned 27.9 billion Yuan 6th-Gen AMOLED JV in September 2024, and is instead doubling down on TFT-LCD and niche OLED applications.

The OLED's industry main new target, for the past several years, has been the IT display sector, mainly tablets, laptops and monitors. While we have seen OLED displays penetrate this market many years ago, the current 6-Gen AMOLED production lines are optimized for smartphone and wearable display production.

A few years ago display makers realized that OLED production lines with larger substrates will enable lower cost production, and will enable to increase the adoption of OLEDs in such devices. When this converged with technology readiness , several companies initiated new projects, all of which use 8.6-Gen (2250 x 2600 mm) substrates. In this article, we detail all four 8.6-Gen OLED production lines that are currently being built - by Samsung Display, BOE, TCL CSOT and Visionox. We also other display makers and how likely they are of launching large-scale 8.6-Gen lines as well. Finally, we see how these new lines will effect the entire OLED industry, whether it is likely we'll see new lines (do we actually need all that added capacity?) and what we expect to happen next.

The Passive Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (PMOLED) industry represents a compelling opportunity for supply chain companies seeking to enter the broader OLED ecosystem. The PMOLED sector offers a more accessible entry point compared to the highly competitive Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) market. 

This industry, while smaller than its AMOLED counterpart, provides unique advantages for suppliers including lower barriers to entry, faster development cycles, and opportunities to establish relationships that can scale to larger OLED markets. Article summary:

• The PMOLED Industry: A Strategic Entry Point for Supply Chain Companies
• Introduction to PMOLED Technology and Market History
• Why PMOLEDs Matter for Supply Chain Companies
• Industry Challenges and Market Entry Strategies
• PMOLED Manufacturer Profiles and Opportunities
• Conclusion and Strategic Recommendations

DSCC posted an interesting chart that details OLED smartwatch shipments by supplier. This is an interesting market as there are almost 10 suppliers with no dominant player:

In fact DSCC says that there are five different OLED panel makers (BOE, SDC, LGD, EDO and Truly) that each has a market share over 10% in 2020.

IHS says that smartwatch display shipments continue to rise, and reached 57 million units in Q3 2019. IHS expects total shipments in 2019 will reach 195 million units - up 31% from 2018 (149 million units).

IHS also revealed the breakdown by display maker. The leading producer by far is BOE Display, followed by LG Display (who produced all of Apple's OLED wearable displays in Q3 2019, but this is now changing) and then Truly.