Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) may drop Samsung Display and opt for local suppliers of AMOLED panels in the near future, a recent study conducted by Digitimes Research has found. Researchers concluded that Chinese manufacturers of AMOLED panels likely won’t be able to find many foreign clients in the next half a decade seeing how their products are currently not technologically up to par with Samsung Display’s offerings, but they’re still expected to grow their businesses thanks to local phone makers. Seeing how many Chinese smartphone manufacturers are currently in the process of expanding their global market presence, suppliers of AMOLED panels in the Far Eastern country stand to benefit from this increased demand for their products, especially if Samsung Display is out of the picture.
By 2020, Chinese AMOLED makers are expected to boast a production capacity that’s half of what Samsung Display and LG Display currently offer. They’re also behind certain technologies that their South Korean rivals have already implemented several years ago. Only Truly Opto-Electronics and EverDisplay are currently capable of manufacturing 1080p AMOLED panels that LG Display and Samsung Display are currently making, while several more Chinese companies may be able to match that by mid-2018. Nonetheless, researchers expect that many phone makers in the Far Eastern country will opt to use local supply chains in the near future, likely due to decreased costs.
This turn of events could financially hurt Samsung Display who already started shutting down some of its LCD manufacturing operations in favor of more contemporary technologies like AMOLED panels. The Samsung Electronics-owned company is currently in the process of transitioning from manufacturing LCD panels so it certainly won’t be pleased if the demand for other panels doesn’t hold up or its rivals take over its supply contracts. Still, the results of this study may not amount to anything so it remains to be seen how well Samsung Display will do over the course of the next few years. Even if Chinese OEMs end up using local AMOLED suppliers in favor of Samsung’s panel-making division, the company still has a number of other large markets where it can generate substantial revenue.