The OLED panel that Samsung will use for its Galaxy M54 smartphone launching next year will be developed by Chinese display panel makers BOE and CSOT, TheElec has learned.
The Galaxy M series is mostly sold online as a budget model in Southeast Asia.
Samsung sells millions of units of the phone but the overall shipment volume is lower than the mid-tier Galaxy A series, which reaches shipments of 30 million to 40 million units per year.
Samsung is using Chinese panel makers to cut costs. It is not known whether Samsung Display will also develop the needed OLED panel, sources said.
Samsung Display, along with BOE, developed and supplied the OLED panel used for the smartphone’s predecessor Galaxy M53 this year.
Samsung used more panels from BOE than Samsung Display for the Galaxy M53, sources said.
The South Korean tech giant is facing fierce competition when it comes to smartphones from Apple in the premium sector and Chinese smartphone makers in the mid-tier sector.
Samsung shipped over 300 million units of smartphones in 2019 but this has dropped down below 300 million units in the past couple of years.
The company uses flexible OLED panels on its premium smartphones and cheaper rigid OLED panels on lower-tier phones.
As Samsung’s smartphone shipment dropped over the years, Samsung Display’s shipment of rigid OLED panels has also dropped.
Samsung recently changed the panel of the Galaxy A24 planned for next year from a liquid crystal display to OLED.
Samsung Display has won the order for all panels on the model, which is expected to reach a shipment of 20 million units.
Samsung began using other panel suppliers besides Samsung Display for OLED panels in 2020 when it used CSOT for the first time in legacy Galaxy M series phones being sold that year.