Hardware

Foldable AMOLED display market to grow by 455%

May 4, 2020

The foldable active-matrix organic LED display market is expected to increase in shipments by 455%, according to a report by Omdia. Worldwide shipments will rise to 3.9 million in 2020, up from 700,000 in 2019.

"Foldable AMOLEDs are triggering a wave of innovation in smartphone form factors, allowing small devices to support very large displays," Jerry Kang, senior principal analyst at Omdia, said in a press release. "The foldable-display smartphone market was initiated in 2019, with the introduction of models from Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo and Royole. However, shipments were limited last year due to the extremely high pricing and low reliability of these models. Despite these challenges, smartphone OEMs are making increasing use of foldable AMOLED displays in 2020, as they propagate the technology through their product lines."

Despite this news, AMOLEDs will only consist of 1.3% of the total market of OLEDs, due to reliability issues. Also, cell phone and display panel manufacturers are the main companies using AMOLEDs.

"The foldable display market could grow much more rapidly if the reliability of foldable cover lenses, touch sensors and polarizer films is improved," Kang said. "To enhance foldable display durability, panel suppliers need to adopt innovations including ultrathin glass covers (UTG), touch sensor on thin-film-encapsulation (TSP on TFE) and color filter on thin-film-encapsulation (CF on TFE)."