Most of us probably know that when it comes to OLED screens, Samsung is leading the industry, holding a grip on almost all of the OLED panel production and shipping market. Notably, smartphone makers who buy OLED screens from Samsung include Apple, Huawei, OnePlus and Xiaomi among others.
Samsung Display has been the dominating player in the OLED business and it looks like its reign is nowhere near over. According to the latest public market analysis the Korean manufacturer shipped over 90% of all smartphone OLED panels in Q1, although its market share declined on a yearly basis - back in Q1 2019 Samsung pushed 94.1% of all OLED panels.
The report was compiled by market research company Stone Partners and it also contains the raw numbers. Samsung Display was responsible for 61.6 million shipped panels for mobile devices out of a total 68.3 million. Second is EverDisplay Optronics with just 3.3 million panels, which is a 4.9% market share.
A representative from the industry was quoted to say that “numbers of rigid OLED panels, supplied by Chinese makers, are currently insignificant.” Expectations are that Samsung will keep dominating the market even more since more and more midrangers and even entry-level smartphones are getting OLED panels these days.
As a titan in the OLED industry, Samsung has also been showing off its bendable OLED screen technology for a long while, with notable demonstrations dating back to seven years ago. Bendable OLED panels finally made their way into consumer smartphones such as the Galaxy Fold last year, with its upcoming second iteration to have an even better, ultra thin glass screen, as opposed to plastic, similar to the screen of the well-performing Galaxy Z Flip.
Like many other businesses, currently Samsung is suffering a drop in revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing a decrease in smartphone sales, with its recent Galaxy S20 reportedly selling 40% worse than the preceding S10 model.
The semiconductor division of Samsung, however, has been doing well despite the global pandemic, as demand for semiconductors continues to be consistent, and may even increase in the near future.
