Apple to Adopt LG’s OLED for iPhones

As noted previously (Takeaways from Our Trip to Korea: Positive for OLED, SYNA), we expect iPhone to eventually adopt an AMOLED display, but this depends on establishing sufficient capacity.

South Korea’s LG Display unveiled plans Friday to build a new plant for small and midsize OLED panels used in smartphones and TVs.

The KRW1.84 trillion (USD 1.6 billion) investment covers the construction of the P10 building, the foundations for the clean rooms and infrastructure for water and power supplies and will begin this year.

Han Sang-beom, who heads LG Display, said that the sizeable investment and more production lines will reinforce LG’s position as the No. 1 OLED manufacturer.

LG Display’s plan to shift their focus to OLED tech is in line with the forecast of the industry’s growth to $29.1 billion by 2022, according to NDTV.

LG Display’s new plant will equally be fitted to manufacture light-emitting diode displays (OLEDs) for bigger television screens and smartwatches together with displays for vehicles. The question is will it even matter given what LG Display has in store.

OLED screens ship a extra vivid image high quality, eat much less electrical energy and promise wider revenue margins than the liquid crystal show (LCD) in widespread use. OLED displays have the advantage here as the light is produced by the pixels themselves rather than a backlight.

Apple are apparently in talks with a number of display makers about them producing an OLED display for a future iPhone model, which will probably be the iPhone 7S. Hopefully the expense of these displays will be driven down with more manufacturing coming on board and more manufacturers using these displays.

Interestingly, apart from LG, the only other top end maker of OLED screens is its rival Samsung.

The investment intensifies the companys rivalry with Samsung Display Co., the dominant maker of OLED panels for smartphones.Samsung supplies the ultra-thin screens to Apples key competitor Samsung Electronics Co. and to Chinese phone makers.

Although Bloomberg analysts said Apple buys about 25% of LG Display’s products, the company still witnessed a 30% sales decline in the third-quarter and demand and profit dropped.