BOE aims to ship 40 million flexible OLED

Chinese display giant BOE is aiming to ship over 40 million units of flexible organic light emitting diode (OLED) panels this year, the company said in its conference call for the first half of 2020.

The company shipped 16 million units of 6th generation flexible OLED panels in the first half, it said.

BOE aims to ship over 24 million units in the second half to exceed 40 million units in total for the year, the company said. It moved 4 million units from July to August.

If the company reaches its yearly goal, it will be a rise of 135% in shipment from last year. According to Omdia, BOE moved 17 million units of flexible OLED last year.

Still, 40 million units will be around a quarter of the annual shipment of Samsung Display, the world’s largest OLED producer.

BOE is also expanding its OLED production line. The company’s third flexible OLED line, the B12, at Chongqing is expected to go live in the second half of 2021, it said.

Coupled with its exiting B7 and B11 line, BOE will secure a monthly production capacity of 144,000 sheets per month.

BOE is also planning to make another, fourth line called B15 at Fuqing, which will be a 6th generation OLED line, at a later date.

According to Stone Partners, in the second quarter, Samsung Display shipped 29.3 million units of flexible OLED panels to control 63.2% market share. This was followed by BOE’s 11.3 million units and 24.4% market share. In the first quarter, Samsung had 81.9% market share with 37.9 million units and BOE 8.5% and with 3.9 million units.

BOE said the B11 line produced 4 million panels out of the 16 million it made in the first half of 2020. B11 line is known as the “Apple Line”. BOE has failed to clinch an order from Cupertino for the iPhone 12 series and the company didn’t reveal then which company bought the panels produced there.

The Chinese display giant is aiming to ship OLED panels to Apple __ both B11 and B7 lines are knocking on the iPhone maker’s door. B7 was BOE’s first flexible OLED line that begin operations in 2017 __ it has supplied to Huawei and Chinese smartphone makers so far. The line is also known to have a stable yield rate.

BOE also said at the conference that it was difficult to say for larger OLED panels whether White OLED or inkjet printing OLED was superior. White OLED is a technology used by LG Display for its OLED panels aimed at TVs. It adds a white pixel to the standard red, green and blue ones. Inkjet printing OLED shoots the light emitting material on to the panel. COST, China’s second largest display maker after BOE, has said last month that it plans to build a factory in Guangzhou in 2023 that will produce large OLED panels.

BOE also said at the conference call that it will begin producing miniLED panels in the fourth quarter.