With OLED displays set to become commonplace in smartphones over the coming few years, LG Display has decided to invest around $3.5 billion (4 trillion won) in setting up an OLED production plant. Dubbed P10, the plant will only be up and running by Q2, 2018 which is still a year away from this point.
While LG Display also makes OLED panels, it is way behind Samsung, the leader in OLED production capacity and market leader. The latter has a 95 percent share of the OLED market and absolutely dominates the market with its panels. Samsung’s dominance in OLED panels has even led Apple to sign a multi-billion dollar deal with the company to procure OLED panels for the upcoming iPhone 8 and the 2018 iPhone. However, with demand for OLED panels set to increase with every passing year, LG Display and other companies are looking to set up their own OLED production plant to meet the demand of OEMs. By 2019, LG Display hopes to manufacture 120,000 OLED panels per month which would still place it significantly behind market leader Samsung. LG Display is already working closely with Google, with the latter even infusing money into it to set up an OLED factory to exclusively supply it with OLED panels for the Pixel 2.
