Samsung Expects to Ship 1m OLED Notebooks
Samsung has not been a major player in the notebook space, and while they did increase sales of their Chromebook series to 2m units last year (4x previous year), and sold 10m Galaxy Tablets, they don’t get close to notebook leader Lenovo (3396.HK), who shipped almost 55m notebooks last year or the #2 Hewlett-Packard (HPE), who shipped over 52m units. That said, the new notebooks that Samsung recently released, both of which have OLED displays, represent a big step up in Samsung’s notebook offerings, and will be a boon to affiliate Samsung Display (pvt), who produces the displays.
Samsung expects to ship 1m of the new OLED notebooks this year, and while that will be less than 1% of total notebook volume this year, on an area equivalent basis, 1m notebook units (50% each of both sizes) would utilize over 6 times the surface area needed to produce 6.5” smartphones, keeping Samsung Display’s OLED fab at higher utilization rates than would be the case if producing only smartphones. Of course Samsung needs to generate customers for these notebooks, but we expect that will not be a problem. That said, if the notebooks sell well, we would expect Samsung to expand such offerings and volumes in 2022, which could move Samsung Display further toward dedicating OLED capacity toward notebook display production or expanding capacity to meet such demand, especially if Samsung’s potential success stimulates outside customer demand for notebook size OLED displays.
Samsung expects to ship 1m of the new OLED notebooks this year, and while that will be less than 1% of total notebook volume this year, on an area equivalent basis, 1m notebook units (50% each of both sizes) would utilize over 6 times the surface area needed to produce 6.5” smartphones, keeping Samsung Display’s OLED fab at higher utilization rates than would be the case if producing only smartphones. Of course Samsung needs to generate customers for these notebooks, but we expect that will not be a problem. That said, if the notebooks sell well, we would expect Samsung to expand such offerings and volumes in 2022, which could move Samsung Display further toward dedicating OLED capacity toward notebook display production or expanding capacity to meet such demand, especially if Samsung’s potential success stimulates outside customer demand for notebook size OLED displays.
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