OLED – Sharing is Caring?
“estimate” – to roughly calculate or judge the value, number, quantity or extent of… We try to maintain our own estimates whenever possible and in cases where that is not the case, we try to aggregate as many data sources into a more comprehensive model to mitigate outliers and inconsistencies. That said, we also like to check our data against others, particularly in areas where there are relatively few data sources or the particular area is subject to excessive politicization or hype. While small panel OLED production has become relatively commonplace in the display industry, most OLED display producers are less than open about production and sales data, leaving much open to speculation and potential enhancement. Given that China is known for its ‘glorious’ representation of its technical prowess and its desire to dominate as many aspects in the technology space as possible, we are always a bit wary of statistics that proclaim China’s dominance (or pending dominance).
CINNO Research (pvt), based in Shanghai, provides data on consumer electronics which is regularly picked up by Chinese technology rags. In many cases the data is shaded (not by CINNO) to show China’s potential as a technology giant, so we decided to check our data against some of the promotional articles we see from China on a daily basis. Here’s what we found:
CINNO Research (pvt), based in Shanghai, provides data on consumer electronics which is regularly picked up by Chinese technology rags. In many cases the data is shaded (not by CINNO) to show China’s potential as a technology giant, so we decided to check our data against some of the promotional articles we see from China on a daily basis. Here’s what we found:
After reviewing both our data and the CINNO data, we notice that our data is actually more favorable to the idea that Chinese OLED display manufacturers are gaining ground against manufacturers from ‘other’ (meaning Samsung Display (pvt)) countries, and while our data does not go back as far as that of CINNO, we note that their earlier data (1H 2018 shows Samsung Display’s share at 93%, which would indicate that they have lost over 20% share over the last 2½ years. That said, when the data is parsed on a quarterly basis Samsung Display’s share over time looks worse, declining from 93% in June of 2018 to 70.2% in March of this year, but even with the enormous growth rate seen by BOE (200725.CH) during the same time period (1868%), SDC still produces over 6 times the number of small panel OLED units than BOE.
While our data leans a bit more to the Chinese camp, we believe it will be quite a while before BOE and other Chinese small panel OLED producers will dominate the OLED business, despite the headlines in the Chinese tech press based on recent CINNO data, and we expect that despite the increased volumes shown for BOE, they are less profitable than SDC, given the advanced displays that SDC is able to produce, which would only be factored into sales values, not unit volume. But the data does show that any display producer that stands still technologically might gain share during up cycles but will likely see profitability fall quickly during the down cycles, both of which are inevitable in the display space.
While our data leans a bit more to the Chinese camp, we believe it will be quite a while before BOE and other Chinese small panel OLED producers will dominate the OLED business, despite the headlines in the Chinese tech press based on recent CINNO data, and we expect that despite the increased volumes shown for BOE, they are less profitable than SDC, given the advanced displays that SDC is able to produce, which would only be factored into sales values, not unit volume. But the data does show that any display producer that stands still technologically might gain share during up cycles but will likely see profitability fall quickly during the down cycles, both of which are inevitable in the display space.
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