It may be difficult for China-based AMOLED panel makers to obtain orders from Apple and other international smartphone vendors at least in the next five years das they are technologically inferior to Samsung Display, but their products are likely to be adopted by local smartphone vendors whose global market share is rising, according to Digitimes Research.
China-based makers have been developing AMOLED technology and are setting up production lines, with total production capacity expected to exceed 50% of the corresponding total for Samsung Display and LG Display in 2020, Digitimes Research indicated.
China AMOLED makers face two major barriers: hiking resolution and harnessing plastic substrate technology. Samsung Display is significantly superior to China-based makers in these two areas.
For the two key technologies, China-based EverDispaly Optronics (Shanghai) in 2017 is expected to attain the level that Samsung Display reached in 2014. EverDisplay is lagging three years behind, while other China-based makers are further behind by 1-2 more years.
In manufacturing AMOLED panels, yield rates for evaporating light-emitting materials are a bottleneck and the yield rates decrease as resolution increases. Among China-based makers, only EverDisplay and Truly Opto-Electronics are capable of producing Full HD AMOLED panels currently, and Kunshan Govisionox Optoelectronics, BOE Technology and Tianma Micro-electronics may be able to do that between the end of 2017 and mid-2018.
Samsung Display began production of flexible AMOLED panels using PI (polyimide) material in the second half of 2014. China-based makers have unveiled such panels but cannot start volume production until 2018.
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