South Korean phone maker, Samsung, remains the dominant smartphone panel maker worldwide during the third quarter of this year, as the company seized 42.7 percent of the smartphone display market in that period with $5.03 billion in sales, according to a report from IHS Markit, a London-based provider of market information and analysis. Overall, the smartphone panel market reached $11.79 billion in Q3 2017, a record high in a single quarter. That means the South Korean original equipment manufacturer has maintained its market position since the first quarter of 2017 at the very least, during which its display sales reached more than $3.5 billion, which accounted for 27.2 percent of the global market, thanks to the substantial growth in shipments of its organic light-emitting diode or OLED displays.
As well as retaining its top spot in the market, Samsung Display (the display manufacturing division of Samsung Electronics) has also eclipsed Japan Display, which snapped up 12.5 percent of the global smartphone display market with $1.47 billion in sales. LG Display came in third, with $1.19 billion, which translates to 10.1 percent of market share. Trailing them are BOE with 8.8 percent market share and Sharp with a market share of 7.7 percent. In the OLED smartphone display arena, Samsung Display is still the top panel maker with $ 5.03 billion in sales, accounting for a market share of 98.5 percent in the third quarter. That’s in keeping with Samsung Display’s market performance in the second quarter of this year, during which it dominated the flexible OLED market with an approximately $3.92 billion in sales, representing nearly 32 percent of the global market. It was followed by China’s Visionox with $27 million in global sales, LG Display with $18 million, and Ever Display with $16 million in OLED panel sales worldwide.
Last March, it was reported that Samsung Display has been planning to infuse its money and resources into the expansion of its OLED production lines with an investment of nearly 10 trillion Korean Won, which translates to $8.9 billion, before the end of this year. According to reports, Samsung Display had already inked agreements with several equipment manufacturers to replace its current LCD production facilities with OLED. It remains to be seen whether the investment materializes before the end of 2017 and how it can help Samsung Display keep its market dominance in the fourth quarter of this year.