Tianma aims to ship 20 million flexible OLED panels in 2021

Chinese display maker Tianma is aiming to ship 40 million OLED panels next year.

Out of that total, 20 million units is aimed to be flexible OLED panels, the company said on Wednesday.

The goal is half of BOE’s aim of shipping 40 million flexible OLED panels, which was announced in August.

According to market research firm Stone Partners, Tianma shipped around a million OLED panels this year. Next year’s goal is 40 times this.

Stone Partners expect Tianma to ship around 7.5 million OLED panels next year, only around 20% of the company’s own goal.

Tianma is actively investing in flexible OLED. It is planning to transfer its 6th-generation rigid and flexible OLED factory, TM17, in Wuhan into a flexible OLED line by the end of the year.

TM17 has a production capacity of 37,500 6th generation substrates per month. 

Tianma is also proceeding to place orders for equipment for its 6th-generation OLED factory, TM18, at Xiamen. These equipment will be placed in the factory by first half of 2022. The factory has a production capacity of 48,000 substrates per month. Some parts of the line will be able to produce low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LPTO) panels. Around 48 billion yuan is expected to be spent in TM18 __ Tianma has a 15% share in the factory.

Tianma is producing rigid OLED panels at its 5.5th-generation factory, TM15, in Shanghai. TM17 in Wuhan has been used to supply OLED panels to Xiaomi, Lenovo, Asus, HTC and LG Electronics.

Tianma’s flexible OLED panel samples re being tested by Xiaomi, Vivo and Honor. Xiaomi’s Mi 11 series is the most likely to use the panels first in the first half of 2021. Tianma has a chance of becoming the supplier along with BOE. Xiaomi ships around 10 million units of Mi 11 series __ including the Lite model and the Pro model.

Tianma isn’t the only company facing difficulty securing customers for its flexible OLED panels. BOE has some customers for its flexible OLED and Visionox also for rigid OLED panels. Panels makers are keen to find new customers due to the vacuum left by Huawei, which was the most aggressive in procuring flexible OLED panels. Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi have been relatively less keen to procure flexible OLED panels.