LTPO (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) OLED smartphone displays are projected to greatly increase over the next decade, according to new market analysis by Omdia. According to the research, these LTPO OLED displays are anticipated to increase to 520 million units by 2031. This would increase LTPO OLED displays in smartphones market share to 52%, surpassing that of LTPS (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon) OLED.
The over all shipment volume of OLED smartphone displays for this year is expected to grow by approximately 28.8% compared to 2023, surpassing 800 million units, and is projected to exceed 1 billion units annually by 2031.
“LTPO OLED has the advantage of lower leakage current compared to LTPS OLED, enabling low-power operation of displays at refresh rates below 30Hz,” says Jerry Kang, Research Manager at Omdia, responsible for OLED and emerging display market analysis. “As a result, smartphone brands are increasingly adopting LTPO OLED as a method to reduce power consumption of their devices.”
Before 2020, almost all OLED displays used in smartphones applied LTPS driving circuits. However, Samsung Electronics changed things by being the first to apply LTPO driving circuits to the OLED display of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (2020). Since then, LTPO OLED has been adopted in various flagship smartphones such as the Apple iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max (2021), Google Pixel 7 Pro (2022), Motorola Razr (2023), and Huawei Mate X5 (2024). Additionally, the application of LTPO OLED is expanding beyond smartphones to smartwatches and tablet PCs, leading panel manufacturers to develop various types of LTPO driving circuits tailored to the characteristics of different OLED products.
Jerry Kang noted, “As generative AI-related features are more frequently incorporated into smartphones, efficient power management of mobile devices is becoming crucial. Smartphone brands are expected to continuously seek enhancements in the brightness and resolution of OLED displays while also requiring that these improvements do not significantly raise power consumption.”
Omdia forecasts that panel manufacturers will adopt the LTPO driving method to the majority of the new investments in small and medium-sized OLED supply capacity (6th generation and below) and will also convert a significant portion of the existing LTPS OLED supply capacity to LTPO OLED. When investing in large OLED production capacities (7th generation and above) for products such as tablet PCs and laptop PCs, the advantages and disadvantages of LTPO and Oxide driving methods in terms of performance, productivity, and investment cost will be emphasized, leading to competition over the next three to four years.
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