From April 6th to 8th, the 2022 OLED Korea Summit was held at the Shilla Shutai Hotel in Busan, South Korea. The conference invited many of the world's leading experts engaged in the OLED industry to introduce and discuss the current situation and development direction of the OLED market and technology.
Dennis Choi, Executive Vice President of Samsung Display, Hyeon Woo Lee, Senior Vice President of LG Display, Dr. Masaichi Sony Nomoto, President of UBI Research, Li Zhongyu, COO of LOTTO Technology (RUNTO), Yuhong Wang, Director of SCHOTT Glass JoongTae Joo, Dr. Joo Koh of Corning Corporation, Dr. Michael Hack, Vice President of UDC, and many other industry senior experts shared information about OLED equipment, flexible glass, Technology advancements and market directions for large-size OLED TVs, OLED displays, XRs, and Metavalse.
Ms. Wang Yuhong, Chief Operating Officer of RUNTO, a chinese technology industry survey agency, introduced the penetration rate of various high-end display technologies in the global TV market in a report entitled "Development of Global High End TV and Role of OLED Technology". Moreover, it is highlighted that OLED will play a leading role in the future TV development trend due to its advantages in industrial camp, supply chain, performance performance and universality. Here are some of the best Chinese conversions:
In 2021, due to the global COVID-19 epidemic and high panel costs, the global TV market shipped 216 million units, down 3% year-on-year. In 2022, the virus continues to mutate and the Russo-Ukrainian war breaks out, so LOTU Technology (RUNTO) adjusted its previous prediction that the market will return by a certain range, and revised it down to reduce the shipment size of at least 4 million units, down more than 1.7% year-on-year.
In recent years, the global TV market has long maintained a platform size of about 220 million units. The reason is that many aspects are intertwined, but there are two main aspects. First, fundamentals, geopolitics, global epidemics, and economic imbalances and other macro environment changes, which have a negative impact on global consumer buying sentiment. The second aspect comes from the television itself. Ms. Wang Yuhong believes that the development of television and tv display technology has been faster than other electronic products, although progress has been made in double-sided, dual Cell, full screen, screen soundstage, touch and other aspects. But these technological advances are in fact classified as micro-innovations, and for the TV itself, there has been no subversive change that has moved or shaken consumers. Therefore, more consumers tend to conservatively do not make electrical changes and do not make purchases.
Especially in mature markets such as China, where the amateur life of families is migrating, users are spending more fragmented time on their phones, and TVs are less than 50% uptime. Some young families have living rooms that don't even have tvs. Television is becoming a non-essential, and users have too many alternative products such as smartphones, smart projections, smart speakers, etc. to get information and entertainment content.
Also because of consumers, their diversity and the diversity of their needs have made the entire TV market dynamic despite operational challenges. The size of the TV market of more than 200 million units, the integrity of the supply chain, and the long-term intelligent operation value and profitability are attracting more and more enterprises and brands to enter the TV industry. At the product level, due to the layering of demand, tv is not only a device for watching programs, but also has social attributes, emotional attributes, and so on. Therefore, television sets are appearing more positioning, more grades. In particular, high-end TV is growing rapidly around the world, taking China, a mature market, as an example, and the penetration rate of high-end TV above $1500 has increased significantly in the past three years. In terms of sales volume, by 2021, the penetration rate of high-end TVs will reach 10.5%.
In high-end TVs, some new display technologies bloom. Micro LED is one of the most concerned tracks for technology and capital today. In 2021, LG, Samsung, Sony, Lehman, Leyard, Konka, etc. have all launched their own Micro LED TVs. Real business opportunities will not be until at least after 2023.
Mini LED TVs are a relatively pragmatic choice at this stage. In 2021, Mini LEDs shipped 2.3 million units worldwide. Most of the shipments are distributed in South Korea's Samsung and China's TCL. These two brands should be the dominant force for Mini LED in the next three years. TCL has more than 60% penetration of Mini LED in its large-size TV sales.
Laser TV is a strong competitor to LCD TV technology in the application scenario of super-size. In 2021, 320,000 laser TVs will be shipped worldwide. Among them, the Chinese market, driven by Hisense, Changhong and Guangfeng, shipped volume increased by 30% year-on-year. In addition, under the downward trend of public opinion on visual health, laser TV will usher in a more optimistic momentum. RUNTO expects that by 2024, more than 1 million laser TVs will be shipped in China alone.
OLED TV is currently the most penetrating sub-category of high-end TV. In the past seven years, the global leaders of OLED large-size TVs have been South Korea's LG and China's Skyworth. As of 2021, LGD is the world's only supplier of OLED large-size panels. In 2021, more than 8 million OLED panels were shipped worldwide, OLED TVs were sold more than 6 million units, and LGE accounted for 4 million units. In 2022, more than 10 million units will be shipped from LGD,000 single WOLED panels, an OLED product group distributed between 42 and 97 inches and up to 8K resolution. Coupled with the shipment of QD OLED TVs, LOTU Technology (RUNTO) judged that in 2022, OLED TV terminal shipments are likely to reach the scale of tens of millions of units.
QD OLED TV comes from Samsung, the global TV leader. In fact, Samsung has been committed to promoting quantum dot TVs for many years, and even has an opposition to OLED TVs. But from 2022 onwards, that all changed. Samsung Group has become another new manufacturer in the OLED camp, coupled with the new Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. that entered the market earlier, and the terminal brand has reached more than 20. At this point, OLED has become another display technology after LCD, which is almost a full-brand participation.
In terms of market brand pattern, the main brands of OLED TVs in the global market are mainly LG and Sony, with market shares of 64% and 18% respectively. It is expected that in 2022, LG Electronics will account for 52% of the global OLED TV market, Sony will account for 15%, and the newly entered Samsung Electronics will account for 20%. In the Chinese market, in 2021, Skyworth will account for 40%, Sony will account for 33%, and Xiaomi will account for 3%, and it is expected that Xiaomi will play a greater role in the popularization of OLED in 2022.
After Samsung Group released the QD OLED panel and TV set, this means that the future trend of OLED has been confirmed again, and it will be the mainstream technology of the next generation of display.
The most fundamental reason lies in the universality of OLED. Like this generation of LCD liquid crystal display technology, OLED can be widely used in a wide range of display hardware, and is the most widely used new technology so far. If a new technology can be used in different scopes and between different categories, it can form a synergistic effect of mutual blessing and ability reuse, and then spread to the whole range and all categories.
Wang Yuhong believes that in the large-size TV industry, the next wave of replacement machines is very likely to be brought about by the popularity of OLED. Historically, the scale of television sets caused by technology has been three times: the first stage is from black-and-white television to color television; the second stage is from CRT television to LCD flat-screen television; and the third stage is from traditional tv to smart TV. Disruptive changes in products are still the most important replacement factor.
The time window for realizing the replacement depends on the maturity of public perception and the change of the spread between OLED and LCD. Taking the mature market as an example, there is still a big gap between the terminal market sales price of OLED and LCD, the price of 48-inch OLED is 6.9 times the price of LCD of the same size, the price of 55-inch price is 3.1 times, and the price of 65-inch is 3.6 times. When the price difference between the two enters below 1.5 to 2 times, due to the excellent display performance of OLED, it is possible to open a wide range of new TV popularization.
OlED also has an optimistic change that can be expected, that is, the supply of OLED panels will be diversified and the technology will be more advanced. From the supply source, starting from 2022, the OLED large-size panel market will open the era of dual-brand supply. SDC Samsung showed that in November 2021, the 8.5 generation line was used to put into production of QD OLED panels, with a monthly production capacity of 30,000 65-inch 4K panels, and it is expected that the annual shipment of QD OLED TV panels will reach more than 600,000 pieces in 2022. At the technical level, in addition to Samsung's introduction of QD OLED to combine quantum dots and OLED, the printing display of Chinese panel manufacturer TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics (CSOT) will also gradually mature, which will greatly improve material efficiency. In addition, it is expected that as soon as this year, Samsung display SDC, LGD, and BOE will also open the RGB OLED 8.5/8.6 generation line investment. This is a challenge that is much higher than the technology of white OLED production line, whether it is the scale of investment, or equipment, technology, talent, each of which is the peak of the current large-size technical difficulty.
Finally, Wang Yuhong mentioned that although the display performance of LCD technology has been infinitely close to OLED, the thinness, softness and transparency of OLED still allow practitioners to expect a lot of imagination: the future of TV will not necessarily exist in the form of traditional television sets, it may be a screen, coffee table, picture frame or window. In outdoor cars, hospitals, restaurants, airplanes, museums, and other spaces, OLED applications will appear. In fact, "everywhere to show" is not only the vision of the world to imagine the display technology, but also the world's requirements for the display technology.