LG Display to invest W10tr in OLED

South Korea’s top display-maker LG Display said Monday it would invest 10 trillion won ($8.5 billion) in OLED production by 2018, pledging a strategic shift to focus on the still nascent but lucrative display technology.

The new investment plan was announced as part of the 20th anniversary of its LCD production at its plant in Paju, Gyeonggi Province.

During the ceremony, LG Display CEO Han Sang-beom hinted at pouring considerable resources into OLED in the coming years, pinpointing the latest display technology as a “game-changer” in the future display market.

With the fresh funding, the company plans to expand its OLED lineup to include larger, flexible displays, while focusing on more premium products when it comes to LCD.

The company expects the new investment to generate 35.3 trillion won of revenue and some 130,000 new jobs.

“OLED is not just LG Display’s future growth engine but also a crucial market for the nation’s whole display industry to maintain its leadership in global markets,” the CEO said at a news conference.

While other display-makers are sticking to LCD for better profits, LG Display has made a big push into OLED.

Unlike LCD, OLED works without a backlight, which allows deeper blacks and richer colors along with sleeker and lighter design. At the same time, its production is tougher and pricier than LCD.

Amid falling LCD prices, LG Display has continued to beef up OLED production. The Paju plant has also improved the yield rate to achieve a monthly production capacity of 120,000 to 130,000 panels from the third quarter.

The company, which was the first to roll out OLED TVs together with its sister firm LG Electronics, plans to strengthen its leadership position in OLED TVs and to diversify revenue sources to smaller mobile devices and automotive displays.

LG Display, then LG LCD, started producing LCDs at the Paju plant in 1995 ― at a time when the global display market was dominated by Japanese makers for more than a decade.

Unlike Japanese rivals, Korean companies joined hands to standardize and share related technologies and overtook flat-TV pioneer Japan in the early 2000s.

Since then, LG Display and other Korean makers have been leading the global display market that has evolved from laptops and PCs to TVs and mobile devices.

LG Display’s sales have also surged from 1.5 billion won in 1995 to 26.4 trillion won in 2014.

In the second quarter of this year, the company was the No. 1 player with a 23.3 percent market share in terms of LCD shipments.

But its LCD earnings are at risk due to cheaper products from China. In order to fend off future challenges, the company has pinned high hopes on OLED.

According to DisplaySearch, the global OLED market is expected to more than triple from $8.7 billion in 2014 to $28.3 billion in 2022.

By Lee Ji-yoon  (jylee@heraldcorp.com)