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Small OLED performance and forecast in the first quarter of 2021

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UBI Research has published a market track on the market performance of small OLED under 10 inches. The main application products are foldable phones, smartphones, and watches.

According to UBI Research’s small OLED market track, OLED shipments for smartphones (including foldable phones) in the first quarter were 140 million units, a decrease of 13.5% compared to the previous quarter (QoQ), but increase of 32.4% compared to the same quarter of the previous year (YoY).


In the first quarter of 2020, OLED shipments also decreased due to a decrease in smartphone sales due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The reason for the 13.5% decrease compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 is that shipments surged in the fourth quarter of last year due to iPhone launches and strong sales.

In terms of sales by company, Samsung Display and LG Display account for 79.0% and 11.3%, respectively, and Korean OLED dominate the market with 90.3%.

Cover window market forecast for foldable phones

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The biggest difference between flexible OLED and foldable OLED will be the cover window material. In terms of price competitiveness, various Colorless Poly Imide (CPI) are superior to suppliers, but in the end, the cover window market is expected to depend on which material Samsung Electronics and Apple choose.

Samsung Display plans to supply only foldable OLEDs using UTG (Ultra Thin Glass) to Samsung Electronics and other China this year, and is expected to adopt UTG as the main cover window material in the future.

BOE and CSOT currently focus on transparent PI, but they are securing technology by continuously collaborating with UTG-related glass processing companies. For this reason, according to the UBI Research component and materials market track, UTG is expected to occupy 80% of the market for foldable cover windows in the future, and transparent PI is low in price and easy to apply to products larger than 10 inches As a result, it is expected to be applied to low-end models, tablets, and notebook models.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2020, small OLED shipments increased by 3.4%↑, sales decreased by 2.8%↓

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Corona 19 and Huawei’s US sanctions negatively affected the OLED market for smartphones, but it was a plus with Apple’s strong sales of iphone 12.

Samsung Display completed the Y-OCTA renovation of the Apple line in 2020, and the LTPO TFT secured a 30K scale. By the first half of 2021, the company plans to convert the LTPS line from Apple’s line to the LTPO TFT line.

The foldable phones released by Samsung Electronics in 2020 are the Galaxy Z Flip released in February and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 released in September, both in-folding and using UTG (ultra thin glass). Galaxy Z Fold 2 is a product to which LTPO TFT technology is applied.

BOE failed several times without exceeding the approval process in Apple’s iPhone12 quality test, but received final approval for panel supply at the end of December 2020. BOE’s new line, B12, is an Apple module line that starts bringing in equipment from December 2020, and is aiming for mass production in November 2021.

According to the annual small OLED display report published by UBI Research, small OLED shipments in 2020 increased by 3.4% compared to 2019, but sales decreased by 2.8%. The increase in shipments is due to the increase in OLED for watches, and the decrease in sales is due to the decrease in OLEDs for smartphones.

In 2020, the total sales of OLED for smartphones was 26.7 billion dollars, of which Samsung Display accounted for 78.8% with 21 billion dollars. LG Display has sales of $2.8 billion and a market share of 10.5%. Samsung Display accounted for 91.7% with 2.35 million dollars in 2019. Smartphone sales in 2020 decreased by 6.68 million units compared to 2019.