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OLED sales expected to go up 60%

Sales of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are expected to soar 69 percent at an annual rate to exceed US$826.5 million this year as power-saving screens become increasingly popular for handheld devices such as mobile phones, market researcher DisplaySearch said.

The sales growth is expected to accelerate next year at an annual pace of 69 percent and would grow by 53 percent year-on-year in 2010 as active matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays become mainstream, helped by improvement in manufacturing technology, the Austin, Texas-based researcher said in a report released on Saturday.

DisplaySearch senior adviser and consultant Barry Young said in the report that “2008 will be a breakout year for AMOLED displays as Samsung SDI, LG Display Co, Sony Corp and Chi Mei EL Corp [CMEL, 奇晶光電] deliver almost 17 million displays, which is up more than 380 percent compared to 2007.”

Last year, AMOLED display makers shipped 3.5 million units, DisplaySearch data showed.

To meet growing demand, CMEL said it would expand capital by 83 percent this year to NT$2.2 billion (US$72.6 million), from NT$1.2 billion, by issuing new shares to fund the construction of one more production line, CMEL said.

Tainan-based CMEL, set up in 2004, is an AMOLED manufacturing arm of Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s second-biggest maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) for computers and TVs.

The AMOLED displays will be used in products such as mobile phones, digital cameras, digital photo frames, handheld TVs and free-standing TVs, Young said.

By next year, OLED display manufacturers are expected to start shipment of displays for notebook computers and will rapidly move into the TV segment, building on the success of Sony Corp’s XEL-1, the TV with the most vivid and realistic image, Young said.

Sony said it would spend ¥20 billion (US$198 million) to develop bigger and cheaper OLED TVs after launching the first model in Japan late last year and in the US earlier this year.

OLED displays compete with LCDs in small and medium-sized applications such as mobile phones and digital music players, but OLED displays consume 50 percent less energy and are 50 percent thinner than their LCD equivalents.

Revenues for AMOLED are expected to see a 96 percent composite average growth to US$2.72 billion in the five-year period ending in 2012, while revenues for passive matrix OLED would remain flat, DisplaySearch said.


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