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BOE’s Low Quality Limiting Efforts to Get a Foothold in Growing OLED Market
June 29, 2020
BOE is supplying OLED panels to a number of smartphone brands, mostly in China and including BOE’s LCD production, their share of the overall panel market continues to increase. But BOE wants both the respect and revenue that would be afforded those companies supplying the iPhone, where Samsung and LG are the only OLED suppliers. Given Samsung’s extensive experience with high volume small panel flexible OLED production, it has not been quite as easy for BOE to establish a relationship. BOE has been sending samples of OLED displays to Apple for a considerable time and while from a more generic OLED display perspective, they meet most OLED smartphone demands, Apple pushes its display suppliers to the higher performance levels. BOE is operating flexible Gen 6 OLED fabs currently with most of the production coming from B7, a 48,000 sheet/month facility that has been in production since mid-2017. B7 is able to produce ~10m 6” equivalent units/month. Apple ships between 90m and 100m iPhone units during the 3rd and 4th calendar quarters, which would come to 15m to 17m units/month.
In order to meet the demand, while still serving other customers, BOE wanted to dedicate their 2nd Gen 6 OLED. But, BOE has low yields at the B11 fab and would can’t use B11 to meet Apple’s volume demands until yields are normalized. However, BOE failed Apple’s quality screen, for technical reasons and will not be an OLED supplier for this year’s iPhone offerings.
BOE has also effected by the US sanctions against Huawei, which limits Huawei’s ability to sell to customers outside of China, creating idle OLED capacity at B7. BOE is also building a 3rd Gen 6 line in Chongqing, which is expected to reach MP in July’21. If the yield issues at B11 are resolved and the new fab (B12) opens on time, BOE would have the capacity to become a primary small panel OLED display provider for the 2021 iPhone iteration, but the technical challenges for BOE, remain as Samsung ups its game and shifts to the M11 stack from M10.
June 29, 2020
BOE is supplying OLED panels to a number of smartphone brands, mostly in China and including BOE’s LCD production, their share of the overall panel market continues to increase. But BOE wants both the respect and revenue that would be afforded those companies supplying the iPhone, where Samsung and LG are the only OLED suppliers. Given Samsung’s extensive experience with high volume small panel flexible OLED production, it has not been quite as easy for BOE to establish a relationship. BOE has been sending samples of OLED displays to Apple for a considerable time and while from a more generic OLED display perspective, they meet most OLED smartphone demands, Apple pushes its display suppliers to the higher performance levels. BOE is operating flexible Gen 6 OLED fabs currently with most of the production coming from B7, a 48,000 sheet/month facility that has been in production since mid-2017. B7 is able to produce ~10m 6” equivalent units/month. Apple ships between 90m and 100m iPhone units during the 3rd and 4th calendar quarters, which would come to 15m to 17m units/month.
In order to meet the demand, while still serving other customers, BOE wanted to dedicate their 2nd Gen 6 OLED. But, BOE has low yields at the B11 fab and would can’t use B11 to meet Apple’s volume demands until yields are normalized. However, BOE failed Apple’s quality screen, for technical reasons and will not be an OLED supplier for this year’s iPhone offerings.
BOE has also effected by the US sanctions against Huawei, which limits Huawei’s ability to sell to customers outside of China, creating idle OLED capacity at B7. BOE is also building a 3rd Gen 6 line in Chongqing, which is expected to reach MP in July’21. If the yield issues at B11 are resolved and the new fab (B12) opens on time, BOE would have the capacity to become a primary small panel OLED display provider for the 2021 iPhone iteration, but the technical challenges for BOE, remain as Samsung ups its game and shifts to the M11 stack from M10.
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