S.Korea relinquishes control to China in smaller OLED market

LG Display Co. and Samsung Display Co. lost ground to their Chinese rivals in the global small and mid-sized organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel market, a fierce battlefield with high profitability, in the first half of this year for the first time in a six-month period.

China’s shipments of OLED panels for smartphones and tablet PCs accounted for 50.7% of the entire smaller OLED panel market in the January-June period, elbowing out Korean OLED panels with a 49.3% share, according to Cinno Research on Friday.

During the same period last year, Chinese OLED panel shipments made up 40.6%, while Korea's shipments controlled 59.4%.

It was somewhat expected after Chinese OLED panels rose to the top for the first time in the first quarter in the global smartphone OLED market with a 53.4% share.

The ascent of Chinese panels in the market was driven by a rise in the adoption of Chinese OLED panels by smartphone manufacturers in the world’s largest smartphone market, such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.

Korea’s Samsung Display retained the top position in the smaller OLED panel market in the cited period with 43.8% but its share shrank from 51.6% a year ago.

The second biggest smartphone OLED display seller was China’s BOE with 13.8%, while Visionox and CSOT’s share jumped from 7.4% to 11.3% and from 5.2% to 9.7%, respectively, over the same period.

FIERCE BATTLEFIELD TO DEFEND

At the current pace, Korean display makers could hand over control to Chinese peers in the global OLED market after Chinese players snatched the crown from Korean players in the liquid crystal display (LCD) panel market in 2021.  

Since their defeat in the LCD market, Korean panel makers have shifted their focus to OLED panels with higher technological barriers.

The OLED panel market is largely divided into the large TV and monitor panel market and the smaller smartphone and tablet PC panel market.

The smaller OLED panel market is a fierce battleground because smaller panel demand is much greater than that for TV panels.

The global small-to-mid size OLED panel market is forecast to nearly quadruple to $8.9 billion in 2029 from 2024 as their demand is expected to grow from other applications such as headsets, automobiles and airplanes.

Smaller OLEDs are also more profitable than their larger peers.

But Korean players lag far behind their Chinese rivals in OLED technology investment, stoking fears that they could fail to fend off China’s ascent again in the OLED market.

China’s largest LCD maker BOE plans to pour 63 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) into the construction of a Gen 8.6 OLED fab for small and mid-size panels.

Korea’s top two display makers Samsung and LG will invest a total of 5 trillion won ($3.7 billion) in same-size OLED panel fabs.

Chinese players’ fast catchup in the smaller OLED display market will throw cold water on money-losing Korean OLED makers’ efforts to regain strength amid growing signs of a recovery in large OLED panel demand.

Earlier this week, LG Display, the world’s top manufacturer of large OLED panels, divested of its stakes in key vendors and cut jobs as part of its restructuring for a turnaround.

Write to Eui-Myung Park at uimyung@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.