Samsung goes low

Samsung goes low

OLED displays are praised for their contrast and color, especially in small panel devices where they are the choice for high-end smartphones and have been moving down the price curve to mid-priced devices.  OLED displays are also well-known for their capabilities for TV displays, and as a self-emitting display, are considered the highest performing display in many categories.  That said, what other uses have there been for OLED displays in the consumer electronics world?  There are OLED tablets, although since 2016 only Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and the parent of OLED display producer Samsung Display (pvt) has released OLED based tablets.  There are a number of OLED panel producers developing OLED automotive displays, but few high-volume CE products have favored OLED displays other than a number of high-end reference and gaming monitors and laptops.
Samsung Display wants that to change, and will be expanding its offerings for OLED laptop displays, but not toward the high-end.  Samsung is heading toward a 13.3” FHD model (1920 x 1080) that will be lower in price than the typical 4K (3840 x 2160) OLED display used in premium laptops.  Samsung is working toward bringing OLED displays to a broader swath of mobile devices by moving OLED displays to lower resolutions, which will widen its potential customer base.  Other considerations aside, the FMM (masks) used for lower resolution OLED displays should cost less which should lead to a lower cost, but more importantly, it will help to fill excess OLED capacity that Samsung Display might have, once they establish a steady customer base.
There are a number of OLED laptops available today, from a variety of brands, although Samsung itself only uses the technology for its tablets and has no OLED laptop offerings.  We believe this is a marketing issue, as Samsung has been a proponent of quantum dots for large panel products and uses OLED only in its smartphones and tablets.  In fact Samsung is expected to offer a quantum dot laptop in 2020, despite Samsung Display’s development efforts for OLED laptop displays.  Samsung Display does sell OLED laptop displays to a number of customers (see Table 1) as noted below and with the introduction of a lower resolution OLED display that is priced below more typical 4K (3840 x 2160) offerings, they should be able to attract new laptop customers who operate at a lower price tier.

2019 OLED Laptops

​As we noted, Samsung Display is always interested in filling idle OLED capacity, and raising the company’s overall OLED utilization level is the key to maintaining and increasing OLED display profitability.  Obviously the smartphone market will generate very high unit volumes, but as larger devices, laptops, even with much lower volumes (see Table 2), use a significant amount of display capacity.

LCD Notebook Panel Shipment Unit Volume

Relative Display Surface Area

​All in, if Samsung Display is able to price its lower resolution OLED displays at a level that can reasonably compare with LCD laptop displays, they will be able to capture a more significant portion of the laptop display market and generate higher sales and utilization for its OLED plant.  This will not be an easy task given the weak LCD display pricing seen over the last few quarters, but laptop designers and marketers would jump at the chance to have another differentiating factor to use in a crowded laptop market.  Rather than offer OLED based laptops only to gamers and videographers, such displays could bring OLED laptops down to rank and file laptop consumers and expand the range of OLED displays to more than just a handful of high-end laptops.