Recently, relevant news showed that LGD has set business goals for next year and will produce 9.2 million large OLED panels next year. By size, 55 inches has the most, reaching 3.2 million pieces, 65 inches, 2.6 million pieces, and 48 inches is 1.3 million pieces. What signal did LG Display release? Will OLED become the mainstream of displays in the future and usher in explosive growth?
OLED, which has emerged with "high-end" Screen
At the 2022 International Consumer Electronics Products Expo (CES), LG released 42-inch and 97-inch OLED TVs, and thus formed a product matrix with a total of 8 size segments of 42, 48, 55, 65, 77, 83, 88, and 97-inches, becoming the brand with the most complete product line of OLED TVs, with a market share of more than 60%, which has further confirmed its position as the first brand of OLED TVs. In terms of price, the 97-inch OLED TV exhibited by LG Electronics at this year's Berlin International Consumer Electronics Exhibition is currently the largest OLED TV in the world, with a price of 39 million won, equivalent to RMB 200,300.
There is no doubt that OLED technology has won more and more attention and capital layout due to its self-luminous performance, such as lightness, flexibility, high contrast, fast response, high color gamut, wide viewing angle, low power consumption, and low cost.
Another Korean display giant, Samsung Display, also added OLED. In April 2020, Samsung officially announced its withdrawal from the LCD panel market and closed all LCD panel production lines in South Korea and China by the end of 2020. In January 2021, Samsung Display officially announced the launch of the new brand logo "Samsung OLED" for its OLED products. In addition, in terms of panel size, a reporter from China National Power Grid learned that Samsung Display will focus on small and medium-sized OLED panels, such as small and medium-sized panels used in devices such as smartphones, and the advantage of LG Display is the large-sized OLED panels required for TVs and other devices.
Regarding the current continuous "innovation" of OLED panels, Liu Fei, research director of the Consumer Electronics Division of AVC, said that OLED TV, as the next generation of display technology, has a good future development prospect. Globally, OLED TVs are constantly expanding in the overseas market, especially in the European market. In the Chinese market, affected by the popularity of large sizes, the limitations of OLED TV sizes have affected the attractiveness of products to a certain extent, but the advantages of picture quality display still have a large demand among high-end consumers.
Wang Dawei of BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. talks about the trend of OLED industrialization, and shows that OLED and LCD have similarities and inheritance of industrialization processes. OLED has been continuously improved and industrialized with the development of LCD. Now OLED has been mass-produced in smart products for more than 10 years. Recently, the development of technologies such as the game industry and photography have put forward more and higher requirements for display and also provided opportunities for the development of OLED.
Display device equipped with OLED panels can be able to get one piece of it?
Against the background of the increasing wider OLED application scenarios, the OLED TV camp has expanded again this year. It is reported that companies including LG, Skyworth, Sony, Konka, Changhong, Philips, Hisense, Panasonic, Huawei, Xiaomi and other 20 brands have joined the market competition.
As the next generation of display technology, although it attracts many brands to join, relevant data shows that OLED TVs still have a long way to go in the future. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, from January to August 2022, the proportion of OLED TVs in China's color TV market was only 0.6%. A relevant person in charge of Aowei Cloud Network told China National Grid reporter that OLED TVs will continue to grow slowly in the future.
Judging from the overall performance of the TV market this year, the price of LCD TV panels has continued to fall for more than a year since the second half of last year. The sharp drop in LCD TV panel prices has had an impact on the price of OLED panels. After the panel price fell, although the price of terminal machines was significantly reduced, the stimulus to market demand was limited. Due to the impact of demand overdraft and the Russian-Ukrainian war in the past two years, the global TV market performed weakly this year.
For future sales expectations of OLED TVs, Rong Chaoping, senior research manager of Aoviriwo, said that due to the intensification of the European energy crisis in Russia and Ukraine, the demand for high-end TVs, the growth of OLED TV shipments is not as expected. From January to August, the global shipment of 3.72 million OLED TVs was shipped, a slight increase of 1.8% year-on-year. The current OLED market share in the Chinese market is low. From January to August, 142,000 OLED TVs were shipped in the Chinese market, a slight decrease from last year. With global consumption downgraded, OLED TV sales are under great pressure.
From the perspective of the market competition pattern, from January to August 2022, Sony accounted for 42.6% of the volume in China's OLED TV market, ranking first. Xiaomi and Skyworth accounted for 22.4% and 13.3%, ranking second and third respectively. Overall, foreign brands account for 51.7%, and domestic brands account for 48.3%, and the two major camps are evenly matched.
In the future expansion of OLED applications, foreign media reported that Apple confirmed to release its first OLED iPad in 2024 and is producing the final prototype of the OLED iPad with Korean OLED (organic light emitting diode) manufacturers. Industry insiders said that Apple's import of OLED displays into tablets is expected to drive the growth of the small and medium-sized OLED display market.
As we all know, in addition to OLED technology, other technical schools including laser TVs and miniLED are also actively seizing the market. Regarding market expectations for different technical schools, Rong Chaoping said that in 2022, MiniLED TVs have expanded in product layout and brand camp, and their market share has also ushered in rapid growth. As of January-August, the volume of MiniLED TVs accounted for 0.9% and the volume of laser TVs accounted for 0.4%. In the future, MiniLED will continue to develop rapidly, and laser TVs and OLED TVs will grow steadily.
However, due to cost reasons, the current price of OLED displays that cost tens of thousands of yuan is still relatively high. The current target group is still professional designers and e-sports players who pursue extreme response speed. Some research institutions predict that cost will still be the decisive factor in the future where the OLED TV market will go. In addition, when talking about the industrialization process and issues of OLED, Wang Dawei of BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. also said, "As we all know, the fixed asset investment in OLED production lines is much higher than that of LCD production lines. OLED products can only gain market recognition only if they provide greater added value."
