LG Display betting on the recovery of TV demand in 2023

LG Display is set an OLED panel shipment target for 2023 that is higher than its expected shipment this year, TheElec has learned.

The company is expected to ship less of the panels than it aimed for this year due to demand for TVs falling, in general, this year from inflation.

LG Display is planning to manufacture 9.2 million units of large OLED panels in 2023 though the target excludes potential supply to Samsung Electronics.

Around 5.4 million units will be manufactured at its plant in Guangzhou, China, and the rest at Paju in South Korea.

LG Display had hoped to ship around 2 million OLED panels to Samsung this year but the pair’s talks were halted in May.

This coupled with inflation meant that it is unlikely that the display panel maker will ship 7.8 million units of the panel in 2022 that it hoped for.

LG Display made fewer panels than it wanted in the first half of the year due to the demand drop and had set more aggressive production goals for the second half of the year but the situation overall had not improved, sources said.

It remains to be seen whether it would resume talks with Samsung for a potential deal to supply it with TV OLED panels.

Samsung is using OLED panels from subsidiary Samsung Display, which makes quantum dot (QD)-OLED panels, but its production capacity is limited.

This means Samsung could adopt LG Display’s white (W)-OLED to expand its shipment of OLED TVs in general next year.

This hinges on the price difference between liquid crystal display (LCD) panels and OLED panels.

Samsung considered buying OLED panels from LG Display in the first place due to LCD panel prices increasing.

LCD prices have dropped this year but could increase again before the year’s end if the low demand for TVs continues, which means OLED panel prices could be more favorable for the tech giant.