LG Electronics to Transfer OLED Business to LG.Philips LCD
LG Electronics (LGE) owns 37% of LG.Philips LCD (LPL). LGE operates two Passive Matrix OLED (PMOLED) lines in Gumi, South Korea, where most of LPL’s TFT LCD fabs are located. Since 1999, LGE has invested over $200 million to develop its OLED business. LGE’s two PMOLED lines have a 2-3 million per year production capacity.
To focus investments toward display manufacturing, LGE is in negotiations to transfer its PMOLED business to LPL. I think it’s a good move. Once the transfer is finalized, LPL will need to update the PMOLED lines to a more advanced Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) technology, which LPL has been developing. The technology update will take some time. However there is still a snatch: LPL does not have good capabilities to modularize small panels and have been using LG Innotek and others to do so. Although AMOLED display shipments will be low, the added cost of logistics and administration will give LPL a disadvantage as long as it does not build its LCD module capacity for small displays.
Source: EETimes
[...] LGE shipped 4.47 million OLED displays, a big jump from only 1.42 million in the first quarter. LGE’s market share was 23.2%, which was only 11.1% in the first quarter. LGE will continue churning out 1.8 million units per month through the end of the year due to expected strong demands for OLED displays. In a previous blog entry, I noted that LGE was expected to sell its OLED business to LG.Philips LCD (LPL) to focus display R&D and investments. If that transfer/sale happens, LPL will contend for the top spot in both large-area TFT LCD displays as well as OLEDs. [...]