Chinese large display makers such as BOE, CSOT, and Visionox are rapidly expanding organic light-emitting diode (OLED) capacity and increasing supply. Korea still holds an edge in the smartphone and TV OLED markets, but there are concerns that in IT devices such as laptops and tablets and in automotive OLEDs, Chinese volume offensives could narrow domestic companies' footing.
On the 8th, market research firm Omdia said the global market share by shipments of automotive displays by China-based panel makers is expected to rise to 65.2% in the second half of this year. This is based on liquid crystal display (LCD), and the share that was 28.1% in 2019 has more than doubled in seven years. In particular, Chinese display corporations are quickly converting cash generated from their LCD businesses into OLED investments.
This trend is not limited to automotive. At the Omdia Korea Display Conference held on the 3rd, a forecast said China's 8.6-generation OLED capacity for laptops and tablets—the fastest-growing segment—will outpace Korea's by about twofold in 2028. Korea still maintains an edge in total OLED capacity, but in the high-growth IT segment, China is set to overtake. Counterpoint Research also projected that China's OLED capacity will surpass Korea's in 2029.
The gap between the two countries in the overall market is also narrowing quickly. According to a report by The Export-Import Bank of Korea's Overseas Economic Research Institute, Korea's global OLED market share fell to 68.7% in 2025 from 87.3% in 2020, while China jumped to 31.2% from 12.1% over the same period. In five years, the share gap between the two countries shrank to 37.5 percentage points (P) from 75.2%P, less than half.
Within two years, the productivity of Chinese corporations' OLED plants is expected to strengthen sharply. Capital expenditures are typically amortized over roughly eight years, and Omdia projected that China's 6th-generation (G6) OLED plants built around 2020 will complete this amortization around 2028. Once the burden of capital investment disappears, there will be room to lower costs, enabling price competitiveness even in the automotive OLED market.
Lee Jae-ho, a research fellow at Counterpoint Research, said, "Korea still has solid capacity across the mobile, IT, and TV institutional sector, but the pace of new expansion investment is relatively conservative compared with China." Foreign media interpreted this to mean that Korea's cautious expansion strategy could become a structural weakness in the long term.
There is, however, a variable. Recently, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), in a preliminary ruling, found that China's BOE improperly used Samsung Display's trade secrets and ordered a 14 years and 8 months ban on imports of BOE's OLED products. It is seen as a case that puts the brakes on Chinese companies' entry into U.S.-bound supply chains, and is cited as an exception to the volume expansion trend.
A domestic display industry official said, "For automotive OLEDs, the barriers for verifying reliability and durability are high, so it is difficult for automakers to switch suppliers easily," but added, "If China's low-priced volume offensive continues, a weakening of bargaining power will be inevitable."