Page 163 - Fortune-November 01, 2018

FOCUS
BLACK AND
BLUE ALL OVER
Behind the inky picture of OLED display technology
is a bruising brawl among some of the world’s
wealthiest electronics companies. By Andrew Nusca
LOOK AT ANY DIGITAL DISPLAYS LATELY? Attendees gaze possibilities with our OLED displays,” says a
TECH
Of course you have. You’ve craned at an overhead
your neck over a smartphone, glanced at a OLED display
made by LG at
car’s entertainment system, and gaped at a the 2017 IFA
big-screen TV. Deep down, you’re horrified consumer
that someone might see the telling totals electronics
calculated by the Screen Time app on your show in Berlin. goes mainstream—just in time for the winter
iPhone. (Time spent responding to political
social media posts by your extended family:
two hours above average.)
34
FO R T U N E. CO M // N O V. 1 . 1 8
Sure, your attraction to glowing panels
of light is a little animalistic, a bit mothlike.
But have you actually looked at them lately?
They’re just…better than they used to be.
Lines are crisp, colors pop, and you get lost
in their inky blackness. They look different
from the displays on your old devices. That’s
because of a technology called OLED.
OLED—which stands for organic light-
emitting diode—may share a few letters with
LED and LCD, the predominant display
technologies of the past decade. But it’s fun-
damentally different. “OLED emits its own
light, and that really offers distinct advantages
when it comes to pixel quality,” says LG Elec-
tronics USA spokesman John Taylor. “Every
pixel can be individually controlled, so that
means it can create perfect black levels—the
most important element to a great picture.”
OLED also commands a much higher price.
It dominates the high-end market segments
it’s in, from phones (Samsung’s $720 Gal-
axy S9) to televisions (LG’s $2,000 C8). Most
important, only a handful of corporations—
including Samsung, LG, and Sony—control its
limited supply.
“Almost every company is investing to
compete with Samsung,” says Jerry Kang, who
leads display technology analysis at IHS, the
market research firm, from Seoul. “The other
market will grow from about $26 billion in
companies are trying to rapidly follow.”
Kang’s firm believes the global OLED
sales this year to $37.5 billion in 2022, driven
losing depends on the device: Samsung sup-
largely by mobile devices. Who’s winning or
plies OLED displays to the world’s top two
phonemakers (itself and Apple), yet an early
decision against OLED inadvertently handed
the premium-TV market to LG and Sony, each
of which claimed more than a third of all sales
last year, according to IHS. (“We firmly believe
that we can continue to expand the world of
Samsung Display spokesman, adding that the
company started investing in development of
the technology 18 years ago.)
The war rages on as OLED prices continue KRISZ T IAN BOCSI—BLOOMBERG V IA GE TTY IM AGES
to plummet and a once-premium innovation
holiday shopping season. “It’s still relatively
young technology,” says LG’s Taylor. “We’re not
going to take our foot off the accelerator.”