LG Display is rumored to be investing billions of dollars into its new P10 OLED production plant in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, according to industry sources. The company was formerly planning more investment in larger OLED TV displays but will instead spend those resources on mobile device OLED panels as it’s preparing to ramp up their production, latest reports indicate. The turnaround is said to be due to the growing demand for OLED display panels for smartphones.
Industry sources claim that the South Korean tech giant will invest approximately $3.50 billion (4 trillion won) into the the new P10 production plant which should be finished by Q2 2018. If the project is completed on time, it will enable the company’s production of OLED sheets to increase to 60,000 units each month by the following year. Along with expanded production of mobile OLED panels at the P10 plant, LG Display is also set to grow current production at its E5 and E6 plants. Insiders say that this could begin next month and that all production plants combined could be making as many as 120,000 OLED sheets per month by 2019. While that sounds like a large amount, it’s still only around half of the numbers produced by Samsung Display, the leading manufacturer in the OLED market for mobile devices.
LG’s heavy investment into the expansion of OLED sheet production follows a report last month citing Kang In-byeong, LG Displays’ senior vice president. He stated that by 2018, 58 percent of smartphones would feature OLED displays, meaning that the use of OLED panels would surpass that of TFT-LCD panels in smartphones for the first time. LG is also thought to be planning OLED displays for future releases of the LG G7 and LG V30 smartphones. As well as LG Display ramping up its OLED panel manufacturing efforts, it has been reported that Samsung is also planning large-scale increases in this area. Other companies such as EverDisplay Optronics, Tianma Micro-Electronics, and BOE Technology are all set to expand their OLED production over the next few years, with industry watchers predicting that the market will get significantly more competitive in the near future. An update on the situation is expected to follow shortly.