Apple supplier LG Display pivots towards OLEDs in face of slower iPhone sales, Chinese competition

LG Display will boost its investment in OLED production, according to the company's CEO, in order to cope with being pinched by slowing iPhone sales and competition from Chinese panel suppliers.

Rivals are starting to make headway in the OLED market, said Han Sang Beom, quoted by Bloomberg. The executive admitted that LG is late to the field, but expects OLEDs to take off in the next few years.

"It's true that we were late in OLED investment for smaller electronics devices compared to that of televisions," he commented at an LG event. "It's undeniable that flexible OLEDs are now the mega-trend in the mobile segment and we will have to embrace that."

Han said that while OLEDs still account for less than 10 percent of LG Display's revenues, the company is considering gradually closing older LCD manufacturing lines, something its rival Samsung Display is already doing to switch over to OLEDs.

Samsung is rumored to be in exclusive talks with Apple about OLED supply, and could be set to ship panels as soon as 2017. That would align with reports that next year's iPhone will be a major redesign, with an edge-to-edge OLED or AMOLED display somehow integrating Touch ID and camera components.

LG will presumably miss out on supplying OLED screens for 2017 iPhones, but could be in a position to join the supply chain for 2018.

7 Comments

TurboPGT 355 comments · 9 Years

About 8 years ago

" with an edge-to-edge OLED or AMOLED display somehow integrating Touch ID and camera components"

Why is this a specific benchmark? I don't need Edge to Edge, I don't need Touch ID integrated in the display. The Home Button is not going anywhere. The mechanical click might go away, but visually, no. And it wouldn't be an improvement if it did.

We can have an OLED display on iPhone, without those added "requirements" that come from precisely no where.

Looking at the OLED display on Apple Watch...I'm somewhat surprised Apple hasn't gone to OLED on iPhone yet. Obviously they are not totally against. It looks quite nice when the black doesn't light up with the rest of the content.

coolfactor 2333 comments · 20 Years

About 8 years ago

TurboPGT said:

" with an edge-to-edge OLED or AMOLED display somehow integrating Touch ID and camera components"

Why is this a specific benchmark? I don't need Edge to Edge, I don't need Touch ID integrated in the display. The Home Button is not going anywhere. The mechanical click might go away, but visually, no. And it wouldn't be an improvement if it did.

I agree. This edge-to-edge will have its drawbacks. People will add a case to provide a buffer, which just brings back the "edge" that was lost. Bizarre.

I hope the Home button remains, except is no longer a clickable button, but rather uses the Haptic Engine instead to create the click. The Home button has finally started wearing out on my iPhone 4. Time for a new button mechanism on the iPhone and iPad lineups.

flaneur 4525 comments · 14 Years

About 8 years ago

TurboPGT said:

" with an edge-to-edge OLED or AMOLED display somehow integrating Touch ID and camera components"

Why is this a specific benchmark? I don't need Edge to Edge, I don't need Touch ID integrated in the display. The Home Button is not going anywhere. The mechanical click might go away, but visually, no. And it wouldn't be an improvement if it did.

We can have an OLED display on iPhone, without those added "requirements" that come from precisely no where.

Looking at the OLED display on Apple Watch...I'm somewhat surprised Apple hasn't gone to OLED on iPhone yet. Obviously they are not totally against. It looks quite nice when the black doesn't light up with the rest of the content.

Why be surprised, when several srories have discussed how Samsung is going to be spending $6.7 billion or so on new OLED fabs in order to start supplying Apple in 2017? And now here is a story that the other OLED company, LG, can't contribute anything yet.

So many people think Apple can just decide one day to switch display technologies. It takes years of production capacity buildup to supply Apple. The same buildup of two years was needed for the LTPS LCD screens for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. And we're still waiting for large IGZO monitors, for all we know because of production limitations.

leavingthebigg 1291 comments · 11 Years

About 8 years ago

I am confused (shouldn't be due to click-bait), but where in the AI's version of the Bloomberg article is it mentioned "slower iPhone sales" and "Chinese competition"? Also, wasn't it reported earlier this year or even last year that LG made a huge investment in OLED in preparation to win possible Apple sales?

Gymkhana 45 comments · 8 Years

About 8 years ago

An OLED display on iPhone would quite honestly be the only near term feature-based reason to upgrade from a 6 series phone. Outside that, what else could an iPhone 7 possibly bring to the table to warrant dropping the $$? 2016 should in fact be a big slump year for iPhone sales, given the market saturation of similarly featured and relevant phones.