LG Display upbeat on growing demand for OLED

[THE INVESTOR] LG Display’s initiative to grow the organic light-emitting diode display market is gaining steam as more television manufacturers are joining the fray for the high-end TVs featuring self-illuminating OLED panels.

Companies like Skyworths, Changhong, Konga, Hisense, Vestel, Panasonic, and LG Electronics are reportedly global TV companies that employ LGD’s OLED panels. More will jump on the bandwagon, according to the Seoul-headquartered display firm.

“The company, after being inundated with increasing demand for OLED TV panels, is running its OLED facilities at full throttle,” an LG Display public relations officer said.

Having shipped around 200,000 sheets of OLED panels in the Jan-March period, it announced in April that it would roll out 1 million sheets this year.

Most of those OLED panels churned out from LGD’s OLED plants are used for 55-inch and 65-inch TVs and only a small amount of the panels are utilized for 77-inch TVs due to high prices, the PR official explained.

Meanwhile, LGD, a long-time display supplier for California-based Apple’ iPhones, has reportedly failed to win a supply bid for the US firm’s next iPhones featuring OLED displays.

Its local rival Samsung Display, on the other hand, has been picked as one of the OLED display suppliers for the next Apple iPhones.

After eating humble pie, LGD has been ramping up its production capacity for OLEDs for mobile devices at its E5 plant in Gumi, which will begin full operations by 2017 in earnest.

LGD CEO Han Sang-beom will participate in a press meeting on July 12 to talk about the firm’s business plans for the latter half of this year.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com">wone0102@heraldcorp.com)