Samsung's smartphones might be slumping, but its OLED displays are bigger than ever
All these phones use Samsung-made OLED screens
While it remains unclear if a redesigned high-end lineup and completely overhauled low to mid-end portfolio will help Samsung bounce back to growth next year, the company’s finances are doing just fine.
The Samsung Display arm of Samsung Electronics apparently made a mind-blowing 93.3 percent of the world’s smartphone OLED screens sold between July and September 2018. That helped generate 58.4 percent of total smartphone display revenues, as LCDs continue to shrink in popularity.
After accounting for 56.2 percent of overall earnings just a year ago, liquid-crystal displays plunged to a 38.9 percent market share in Q3 2018. Very few high-end devices use LCD panels nowadays, and more and more LCD-specialized display manufacturers are shifting their focus to higher-quality OLEDs.
But it’s going to take a long time for the likes of LG, Sharp, and BOE to catch up with Samsung, which has a near-monopolistic position even in the supply chain of arch-rival Apple.
If you’re wondering just how profitable OLED panels can be, we should probably mention they accounted for 61.1 percent, or a whopping $6.6 billion, of the $10.8 billion sales generated by the entire smartphone display industry during this year’s third calendar quarter. Incredibly enough, Samsung’s share of shipments stood at only 22.8 percent, hinting at some pretty massive profit margins.
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