The PC market is accelerating towards premiumization... Competition for high-performance tandem displays is fierce

As the global PC market is rapidly reorganizing away from low-price competition and focusing on high-priced, high-performance products, competition over organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology, which has become the standard for premium displays, is also intensifying in the display industry.

In particular, 'Tandem OLED', which can increase brightness and lifespan while lowering power consumption than existing OLED, is emerging as a core technology for premium PCs, and the battle for technological leadership between Samsung Display and LG Display, the two major players in the domestic display industry, is expected to intensify.

According to market research firm Omdia on the 11th, PC shipments in the United States, a major global market, increased by only 1.0% in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, but market sales increased by 13.1%.

Shipments of products priced under $699 (approximately KRW 940,000) decreased by 6.5% compared to the same period last year, but shipments of ultra-high-priced products priced over $1,500 (KRW 2.01 million) increased by 36.8%. Accordingly, the average selling price (ASP) of PCs in the U.S. market rose 12%, exceeding $1,000 for the first time in history.

Omdia analyzed that this is the result of a simultaneous increase in prices of components such as memory and premiumization, in which PC manufacturers allocate limited production capacity to high-priced, high-profit products.

A similar trend is expected to continue in the global PC market. Gartner, a market research firm, predicts that global PC shipments this year will decrease by 10.4% compared to the previous year, while PC prices will rise by 17%. This means that the tendency for PC companies to focus on relatively more profitable premium products rather than protecting their shipments by selling more low-priced products is strengthening.

As the PC market shifts towards premium, the proportion of OLED panels, which are mainly installed in high-priced and high-performance products, is also increasing significantly. Omdia predicted that global monitor and laptop panel shipments this year will decrease by 0.4% compared to the previous year to approximately 397.89 million units, while OLED panel shipments will increase by 55.6% to 23.95 million units.

Due to the influence of Premium Shift, the business direction of the display industry is focusing on ‘how much the value of a single PC product can be increased’ rather than reducing the cost of OLED panels. In the past, the main task was to increase the price competitiveness of OLED for PCs, which are expensive compared to liquid crystal displays (LCDs), but now technology that adds value to finished products, such as improving picture quality, power efficiency, and use time, has become more important.

In this respect, the display industry is focusing on strengthening its technological leadership, viewing tandem OLED as a representative technology that can simultaneously increase the performance and efficiency of PCs and increase their value.

Tandem is a technology that stacks the three primary colors of light, R (red), G (green), and B (blue) elements, into independent layers, and is brighter, consumes less power, and has a longer lifespan compared to the RGB single stack OLED that is currently most commonly used in the market.

In the industry, LG Display is evaluated as having leading competitiveness, having commercialized tandem OLED for the first time in the world in 2019 and starting mass production of tandem OLED for laptops for the first time in 2024. At this year's 'SID (Society for International Information Display) Display Week', the world's largest display event, the '3rd generation tandem OLED' technology, which reduces power consumption by 18% and more than doubles the lifespan, was unveiled.

LG Display explained that beyond preemptive mass production of products, it has accumulated intellectual property (IP), including prior technologies and patents, across tandem OLED materials, devices, stacked structures, and driving technologies.

Samsung Display is also speeding up the advancement of tandem technology. ‘Quantum Dot Organic Light Emitting Diode (QD-OLED) Penta Tandem’, introduced earlier this year, applied a five-layer stacked structure to blue OLED, increasing the luminous efficiency by 1.3 times and the lifespan by two times compared to the existing QD-QLED, which has a four-layer structure. Last July, it was announced that tandem OLED for laptops that meets the high-brightness display certification level of VESA, a global display standards organization, will be supplied to PC companies in earnest.

An industry official said, "While LG Display is seeking to take the lead in the market based on its advanced mass production experience and patent portfolio, Samsung Display is also catching up through technology development and customer expansion." He added, "The competition between the two major domestic display companies surrounding the premium IT OLED market will become more intense."