Apple to account for half of flexible OLED smartphones in 2021
Flexible OLED shipment to jump 52%, says Stone Partners
Half of new flexible OLED smartphones launching in 2021 will be produced by Apple, according to data from research firm Stone Partners.
According to the research firm, 315 million smartphones launching next year will use a flexible OLED panel.
This is 52% higher than this year’s expected shipment of 207 million units.
Apple’s use of flexible OLED for its iPhones will likely have flexible OLED shipment surpass that of rigid OLED for the first time in 2021.
Stone Partners expected 282 million smartphones will use rigid OLED panels next year, a 24% increase from this year’s 2.27 million units.
Apple is expected to ship 90 million OLED iPhones __ this will increase by 80% to 160 million in in 2021, the research firm said.
Samsung’s flexible OLED smartphone shipment, meanwhile, is expected to increase from 53 million this year to 90 million next year. Last year, the company moved 62 million flexible OLED smartphones.
For rigid OLED smartphones, Samsung is expected to launch 99 million this year and this will increase to 100 million next year.
Forecast for Huawei has dropped substantially however. The Chinese tech giant was expected to move between 50 million to 60 million flexible OLED smartphones next year prior to US sanctions. This has dropped to 8 million units.
The vacuum left by Huawei will be filled by Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo but these three companies will offer some 20 million flexible OLED smartphones, Stone Partners said. The remaining 30 million to 40 million units will be filled by rigid OLED smartphones.
Xiaomi and Oppo will each launch 18 million units of flexible OLED smartphones next year, Stone Partners said. Vivo will ship 12 million units.
Meanwhile, total OLED smartphones shipment that combines both flexible and rigid panels will be 434 million units this year, the research firm said. This will jump to 597 million units next year.
Smartphones using liquid crystal display (LCD) screens will drop to 793 million units next year from this year’s 831 million units.
A total of 1.265 billion smartphones will be shipped this year __ this will increase to 1.39 billion next year, Stone Partners said.