DSCC TV Cost Report Highlights Battle Between OLED and MiniLED

Austin, TX -

DSCC shows MiniLED and OLED TVs in a tough cost battle for the premium space. MiniLED and OLED will compete in the marketplace, and the cost profile of the two technologies shows they are both much more expensive than conventional LCD. This suggests that MiniLED TV products will compete at retail price points similar to WOLED TV, and that’s what has been seen from Samsung’s early pricing for its QD Neo MiniLED TVs.

DSCC reports that LGD expects to sell 7M to 8M OLED TV panels in 2021, compared to 4.4M in 2020, and to help this effort it will introduce new screen sizes that can allow lower price points. Whereas prior to 2020 LGD’s lowest cost OLED TV panel was a 55”, the cost of 48” UHD panels is 20% lower than 55” UHD, and the cost of 42” UHD panels is 33% lower. This will allow LGD’s customers to introduce OLED TVs at lower price points which will broaden the market.

The WOLED product in 2021 costs less than the MiniLED, but DSCC expects the cost of MiniLED to decrease faster than WOLED, so the cost premium declines from 7% in 2021 to cost parity in 2025.

In addition, DSCC estimates that 55” UHD WOLED total costs in 2021 in China will be ~14% lower than Korea production, with a similar advantage for 65”. LGD is continuing to improve production at its Gen 8.5 White OLED (WOLED) fab in Guangzhou, China. While the cost report shows that total panel costs from China production in 2020 were higher than the costs for comparable panels made in Korea, by this year the advantages for China production allow lower total costs. China has lower costs for depreciation, personnel, indirect, and SG&A, leading to lower total costs even though yields in Korea will remain higher than China.

According to DSCC Co-Founder Bob O’Brien, “With the pandemic-fed surge in TV demand, TV makers have been solidly profitable despite rising LCD TV panel prices. Those higher LCD prices may boost the prospects for OLED TV, but MiniLED models will compete with OLED at premium price points, and this may eventually lead to a price war between these competing technologies.”

DSCC’s Advanced TV Display Cost Report provides detailed cost profiles of 96 distinct LCD products, including combinations of screen size, refresh frequency (60Hz/120Hz), backlight (conventional /QDEF/MiniLED), gen size and manufacturing location (Korea / China) and including open cell models. The report covers 62 distinct OLED products, ranging in size from 31” to 88”, with resolutions from FHD to 8K, and manufactured on Gen 8.5 and Gen 10.5 in China and Korea.

MiniLED will have many variations across brands and product lines, with different levels of cost/performance depending on the number of LEDs. A more detailed view of MiniLED costs is available in DSCC’s MiniLED Backlight Technology, Cost and Shipment Report, which covers 90 different configurations of MiniLED panels for TV, monitor, notebook and tablet applications in screen sizes ranging from 10.3” to 75”.

DSCC includes cost models for 31” FHD and 83” UHD panels, plus cost models for 42” UHD panels made in an MMG configuration. LGD’s Gen 8.5 fab can efficiently make 55” and 48” panels in a conventional configuration (6-up and 8-up, respectively), but 42” panels cannot be made efficiently without MMG. As a comparison, whereas 55” 6-up reaches 90% glass utilization and 48” 8-up reaches 91%, a standard configuration for 42” (also 8-up) achieves only 70% utilization. The MMG for 42” involves 8-up panels in landscape mode, plus 2-up 42” panels in portrait mode, to achieve 87% glass utilization.