UBI Research has reduced its forecast for LG Display’s large-sized OLED panel shipment this year by over 25%.
The South Korea display maker is expected to ship 3.6 million units this year due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, UBI Research CEO Choong Hoon Yi said at a conference on Thursday. This is 1.3 million units less than the research firm’s initial forecast of 4.9 million units, Yi said.
Even this 3.6 million unit forecast was based on the assumption that the global TV market will recover and that LG Display will be able to operate its OLED plant in Guangzhou, China normally, the CEO said.
Depending on the circumstances, LG Display’s shipment could further decrease to 3.2 million units, he added.
The display maker shipped 3.3 million large-sized OLED panels last year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korean analysts put their shipment forecast as high as 6 million units hits year.
However, Yi noted that its was a positive sign that 19 companies, excluding Samsung Electronics and TCL, is planning to launch OLED TVs. Demand for OLED TV panels remained small, with LG Electronics taking up 60% of the demand and Sony 20%, the CEO said. The demand from the remaining 17 companies was still marginal.
LG Display’s Guangzhou plant should begin operations on July of 2019, as initially planned, Yi said. The display in operations have cost LG many clients.
Meanwhile, Samsung Display’s QD-OLED panels is expected to account for less than 10% of total large-sized OLED panel shipment in 2025, he CEO said. Samsung Display will likely stop investment for QD-OLED panels at 30,000 sheets per month. The initial expectations that another 90,000 sheet per month line investment would be spent on QD-OLED will be used for quantum dot nanorod LED (QNED) instead, Yi predicted.
QD-OLED uses blue OLED as light emitters and has a quantum dot film to express red and green. QNED has a similar structure except that the blue OLED is a blue LED.
Samsung Display will use its 8.5th generation line to manufacturer 65-inch 8K panels for TVs and 32-inch 4K panels for monitors, Yi also said. The line will be able to produce up to 830,000 TV panels up to 2025.
