The flexible display panel industry is poised to see speedy growth in China as major domestic panel makers have scaled up production capacities in the thinner and foldable screens used for smartphones, owing to the maturity of technologies and cost reductions. Statistics from Sigmaintell Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm, showed the global shipment of flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels is expected to reach 405 million units in 2022, with Chinese display makers accounting for about 36% of the market share. Shipments of foldable smartphones surged 171.9% on a yearly basis to about 7.21 million units in 2021, and the figure is foreseen to reach 14.4 million units this year, an increase of 99.6% year-on-year.
Industry experts said that compared with traditional liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED is the next-generation display technology that has great improvements in terms of image contrast, brightness and color spectrum, thus further accelerating the upgrade of the display industry. The penetration rate of OLED panels in the smartphone market worldwide is expected to be 50% by 2026, according to Sigmaintell. BOE Technology Group Co, a leading Chinese display panel supplier, topped the domestic market with flexible OLED panel shipments of about 60 million units in 2021, up nearly 60% year-on-year. It became the world’s second-largest OLED maker next to South Korea’s Samsung Display, it added. The total revenue of BOE stood at CNY219.3 billion last year, up 61.79% year-on-year, while its net profit surged 413% to a record high of CNY25.8 billion. Its flexible display screens have been applied in some of the latest flagship smartphone products, such as Honor’s Magic 4 series and Oppo’s Find X5. The company’s OLED panel shipments are expected to exceed 100 million units this year, BOE said.
At present, BOE owns three sixth-generation flexible active-matrix organic light-emitting diodes (AMOLED) production lines. It started mass production of the flexible panels at its facility in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in October 2017. The panels have already been used by more than 10 smartphone manufacturers.
The company’s second production line in Mianyang, Sichuan province, began mass production in 2019, while its third facility in Chongqing was put into operation last December. Visionox Technology, another Chinese display panel supplier, said it will continue to focus on cutting-edge AMOLED technology, which is expected to have wider applications in smartphones, computers, smart wearables, vehicles, smart homes, virtual reality and augmented reality, the China Daily reports.
