According to daily newspaper The Korea Times, the dominance of Korean companies in the global display market is being challenged as recently reported data shows the market share of OLED (organic light-emitting diode displays). ) of Chinese companies surpassed Korean companies for the first time in the first quarter of 2024.
Industry experts believe that this change in position is due to China's "patriotic consumption" campaign, which has caused Chinese smartphone manufacturers to prefer domestically produced OLED screens.
Currently, major companies in the Korean industry such as Samsung Display, LG Display,... are trying to maintain their leading position with high-end products compared to Chinese competitors. However, competition in the market is increasing, causing many difficulties for the "big guys" from Korea.
According to data from market tracking company Omdia, Chinese companies accounted for 49.7% of global OLED shipments in the first quarter of 2024, while Korean companies accounted for only 49%. This data shows that China's OLED market share has surpassed Korea's.
Previously, in the first quarter of 2023, Korean and Chinese companies held market shares of 62.3% and 36.6%, respectively, maintaining a fairly large gap at 25.7 percentage points. . However, this number quickly narrowed to 9.5 percentage points after just three months. This gap continued to widen to 14.9 percentage points in the third quarter and 16.7 percentage points in the fourth quarter of the same year. However, the position was eventually reversed in the first quarter of 2024.
If considering revenue from OLED alone, Korean manufacturers still maintain a dominant market share. This means that Samsung and LG maintain their strength in high-value products, but the revenue gap is also narrowing rapidly.
According to Beijing Sino Research - a market tracking company, Chinese display companies accounted for 50.7% of the global smartphone OLED market by shipment in the first half of 2024. Synonymous with China's employment increased by 10.1 percentage points over the same period in 2023. But the market share of Korean companies decreased from 59.4% to 49.3% over the same period.
Since China launched its “Made in China 2025” strategy in 2015, the country has promoted the goal of improving the self-sufficiency of domestic industries, leading to manufacturers major smartphone uses domestically produced OLED screens for its new products.
According to data from the Korean Display Industry Association, only 16% of smartphones made by Chinese manufacturers will use OLEDs made by Korean companies in 2023. This figure represents clearly a sharp decrease compared to 77.9% in 2021 and 55.6% in 2022.
