After peaking near $21 billion of revenue in 2017, the market for capital equipment used to manufacture OLEDs and LCD panels has suffered from continuous annual declines as the flat panel display (FPD) industry has matured. This trend is culminating in 2023, with FPD equipment revenues declining 71% to a record low of just $3.1 billion. However, Omdia’s recently released OLED and LCD Supply Demand and Equipment Tracker reveals the market is expected to rebound with 153% growth to $7.8 billion in 2024.
The 2024 recovery is mainly confirmed at this point with purchase orders already placed or about to be so for Tianma’s TM19 Gen 8.6 LCD, China Star’s T9 Gen 8.6 LCD, Samsung Display’s A6 Gen 8.6 RGB FMM OLED, and BOE’s B20 Gen 6 LTPS LCD factories.
Although current FPD market conditions remain unconducive for large capital outlays by panel makers, equipment makers are hopeful that panel demand will start catching up to supply in 2024 and 2025, and that improving panel profitability will encourage new factory investments.
Panel makers are now evaluating a wide variety of new factory plans and technologies that will enable them to produce advanced displays for near-eye AR/VR, automotive, IT, and even television applications.
The timeline from factory ground-breaking to equipment move-in in China is approximately one year. While in Korea, shuttered LCD factories mean legacy facilities can be repurposed for OLED production relatively quickly and lead times for manufacturing equipment, from purchase order to delivery, are similarly about a year.
Furthermore, new factory investment decisions will be highly dependent on whether panel makers are able to win government-backed financial support, market conditions, and technical feasibility confirmation.
“At this point, visibility into 2025 investment plans is poor. Assuming some of the factories now under consideration, such as BOE and LG Display’s Gen 8.6 RGB FMM OLED factories, HKC and Visionox’s RGB photolithography OLED plants, Vedanta’s LCD fab in India, and expansion of WOLED and QD OLED capacity in Korea, it’s reasonable to anticipate a moderate and sustained FPD equipment market recovery through 2026”, commented Charles Annis, Omdia’s Display Research Practice Leader.
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