QD-OLED to account little in large-sized OLED market: UBI Research

Quantum dot (QD)-based organic light emitting diode (OLED) panels will remain under 10% of the total large-sized OLED panel shipments up to 2024, a South Korean research firm said on Thursday.

Earlier this month, Samsung Display announced that it has put in equipment into its Asan factory for use in its QD Display line.

However, the company will only invest a limited amounted for the line and for a production rate of only up to 30,000 substrates per month as it will move towards producing quantum dot nanorod LED (QNED) displays, UBI Research said.

In 2021, shipment of WRGB-OLED panels, produced solely by LG Display, will reach 4.69 million units, while only 360,000 units of QD-OLED panels will be moved. In 2024, 9.77 million WRGB-OLED will be shipped while QD-OLED shipment will reach 830,000 units.

WRGB-OLED adds a white light emitting diode to the standard red, green and blue ones. QD-OLED on the other hand, uses blue organic light emitting diode and has a QD sheet atop it to make the colors red and green.

QNED has almost an identical structure to QD-OLED __ it uses thin film transistors (TFT) and QD color filter but has a nanometer-sized blue LED module as the light source.

QD-OLED will also account only around 10% of emitting materials purchased for large-sized OLED. In 2021, US$20.8 million will spent in materials for QD-OLED. This will rise to US$41.1 million in 2024. In contrast, US$240 million will be spent to purchase emitting materials for WRGB-OLED in 2021 and this will rise to US$282.8 million. 

UBI Research also noted that there was little chance that LG Display will apply inkjet printing method due to limited man power and dispersion of investments. LG Display will continue to invest in deposition OLED method as it proceeds to commence the investment for its 10.5th generation line to lower price and improve panel quality, the research firm said.

LG Display is planning to operate a 10.5th generation OLED line at its factory in Paju, South Korea. However, production was initially slated to begin between 2022 to 2023 but this has been delayed. Low operation rate of its 8.5th generation OLED line at Guangzhou, China and the company’s current losses are the cause of the delay.

Meanwhile, UBI Research noted that HKC’s H5 factory line in Changsa, China, will likely be for Liquid Crystal Line (LCD), not a large-sized OLED line as some predict. The company likely mentioned OLED to gain interest in the project as over 90% of the funding for the factory is being secured from outside investors.