Samsung Display has increased its shipment target for notebook OLED panels this year.
The company originally aimed to ship over four million units but increased this to between 5.5 million to six million units, people familiar with the matter said.
This is 40% to 50% higher than its initial target.
The company is seeing higher than expected demand for its notebook OLED panels from high demand for laptops due to the pandemic.
Samsung Display’s largest customer for the panels is Taiwan’s Asus.
The display panel maker is aiming to supply the Taiwanese notebook brand with 1.5 million units of OLED panels.
It is planning to supply a million units to Samsung Electronics; between 500,000 units to 600,000 units to HP. It is hoping to supply Lenovo, Dell and Xiaomi each with between 400,000 units to 500,000 units.
Asus is leading the gaming notebook market. OLED’s strengths such as wider color gamut, contrast ration and fast response time can appeal to this market.
Lenovo, HP and Dell, though they have larger shares than Asus, are more focused on mid-tier offerings that don’t require high specification panels.
Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics is aiming to ship a million units of its Galaxy Book Pro series of notebooks, which use OLED panels. People familiar with the matter said the tech giant is aiming to ship even more notebooks in 2022.
According to UBI Research, 1.1 million units of notebook OLED panels were shipped in the first quarter this year, exceeding the total annual shipment of 800,000 units in 2020.
Samsung Display will likely decide on whether it will expand its IT OLED panel production line depending on how well Asus and Samsung Electronics sell their respective OLED notebooks.
Samsung Display is currently manufacturing notebook OLED panels at its A2 line, which manufactures rigid OLED panels.
The display panel maker is planning to offer up to 10 sizes ranging from 13.3-inch to 16-inch. Last year, the company offered five different sizes.
According to Strategy Analytics, last year, Lenovo shipped 54.9 million units of notebooks for a market share of 24.2%. This was followed by HP’s 52.2 million units for 23% market share and Dell’s 35.4 million units for 15.6% market share. Apple shipped 19.7 million notebooks for a share of 8.7%. Acer moved 16.5 million units for 7.3% share.