The penetration rate of Samsung Display's flexible AMOLED panels at the high-end smartphone segment in China in the first quarter of 2021 was higher than that seen a year earlier, Digitimes Research has found.
Among Chinese vendors, only Huawei and its spun-off Honor and ZTE have opted to adopt flexible AMOLED panels rolled out by local panel makers. Others, including Xiaomi and Vivo, were primarily using locally made AMOLED panels to produce mid-tier models.
Samsung Display's newly launched E4 AMOLED panels improve the brightness of the displays to 1,500 nits from the 1,200 nits found in the previous model and reach a contrast ratio of 5-million:1, which has enabled the Korean panel maker to continue to make headways in the China market, Digitimes Research says.
Samsung Display has also lowered its rigid AMOLED panel prices, making those products more affordable than rival Chinese vendors' LTPS TFT LCD panels.
Honor has launched its first smartphone, V40, after being spun off from Huawei. The Honor V40 features a MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ CPU, with its AMOLED panels coming from BOE Technology and Visionox.
ZTE has been using AMOLED panels from Visionox since 2017. Visionox has managed to roll out full-screen AMOLED panels with in-display camera modules.
In addition to using E4 AMOLED panels from Samsung Display, Xiaomi has also purchased flexible AMOLED ones from China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) for its updated Xiaomi 10S model.