UBI - Page 7

UBI Research says that AMOLED revenues reached $4.31 billion in Q1 2017, up 15% from Q1 2016. In terms of units sold, UBI says that 99.1 million AMOLED panels were shipped - up 9% from Q1 2016. Obviously this means that average price per panel is up - probably because most of the growth came from higher-end flexible AMOLED displays and larger OLED TV panels.

Looking forward, UBI says that in the next quarters over 100 million AMOLED panels will ship - and over 300,000 OLED TV panels. The total AMOLED maket will grow at a CAGR of 33% - and reach $59.3 billion in 2020.

UBI Research estimates that the OLED emitter material market will grow from $960 million in 2017 to $3.36 billion in 2021.

UBI says that displays shipping to Apple will amount to $560 million in emitter material sales in 2021.

UBI Research estimates that Samsung Display's AMOLED market share will be 89% in 2017. As more and more OLED producers join the market, SDC's market share will fall to 72% by 2020.

Samsung Display will still increase its production capacity substantially - but it will not be able to remain its market share. The whole market will grow to $57 billion by 2020 (up from about $12-15 billion in 2016), so this is still an excellent growth for Samsung.

UBI Research says that automobiles will start adopting OLED displays "in earnest" starting in 2018 - for instrument cluster and infotainment displays. The automotive display market itself is expected to grow quickly (CAGR of about 17% from 2017-2022) as new technologies mean that displays in cars are getting more and more important.

UBI estimates the total automotive display market at $25 billion by 2022 - out of which OLEDs will account for about 20%, or $5 billion. The main challenge still facing massive OLED adoption, according to UBI, is the lifetime of AMOLED panels.

UBI Research is seeing increasing demand for OLED in smartphones - especially for flexible OLEDs. The market analysts at UBI estimate that the market share of OLED technologies in the smartphone display market will rise from 16% to over 62% in 2016.

UBI sees most investments in OLED capacity increase in the future going into flexible OLEDs - and by 2021 flexible OLEDs panels will represent about 70% of the total smartphone display OLED market.

UBI says that in Q3 2016, shipments of AMOLED panels for smartphones reached 96 million. This is an increase of 148% over Q3 2015 and a 103% increase over Q2 2016.

UBI sees AMOLED shipments increasing in a CAGR of 41% from 2016 to 2020, to reach 1.4 billion units in 2020. Flexible OLEDs will amount to about 60% of all AMOLED shipped by 2020.

UBI Research predicts that OLED TVs produced using a solution-based process will start to appear in the market in 2019. Evaporation-processed WOLED TVs will still be the market leader with a 85% market share (of the total OLED TVs) in 2021.

Solution-based OLED emitters are not as efficient or long-lasting as evaporation OLEDs, but ink-jet printing will enable to reduce costs compared to evaporation, and for OLED TVs this can make business sense, especially as a WOLED (WRGB) structure is less efficient than a direct-emission RGB architecture. UBI sees solution-based OLEDs competing with WRGB OLEDs for the mid-range TV market, not the premium one.

UBI Research says that WOLED technology will lead the premium TV market from 2020 onwards. LCD will not be able to match the performance of OLED TVs at the high-end of the TV market, and solution-based OLED TVs and QD TVs will find it hard to penetrate the market as WOLED technology is one step ahead in commercialization.

According to UBI, in 2016 OLED TVs will grab a 16.7% share of the global premium TV market. In 2020, OLED TVs will lead that market with a 68.1% share.

UBI Research foresees the flexible AMOLED market rising from $4.9 billion in 2016 to $40.8 billion in 2020 - a CAGR of 70%. According to UBI, in 2020 around one billion flexible AMOLEDs will be produced.

UBI says that there is a high possibility that a foldable smartphone will be launched in 2017 to observe the market reaction - which means that it'll be a low-volume high-end product - there are still many challenges towards a foldable device.

UBI Research says that while virtually all flexible OLEDs used in smartphones today use an edge-type design (which UBI refers to as bezel-less), by next year Samsung will be able to use a flexible OLED to cover the entire smartphone screen.

Such bezel-less displays will grab an almost 20% market share in 2017 (out of all flexible OLED smartphones, that is) - and this will grow to over 50% by 2020. Foldable OLEDs will be the next step, and these will start to appear in 2019 - although UBI does not think foldable OLEDs will grab a meaningful market share even in 2020.