Samsung, LG waging fierce war in OLED screen panels

South Korea’s Samsung Display and LG Display Co. are locked in a fierce war for supremacy in manufacturing OLED panels for monitors amid booming sales of such screens, which are forecast to break a record 1.1 million units next year.

The Taiwan-based market intelligence company TrendForce on Sunday said OLED monitor shipments this year will reach 508,000 units, up an incredible 323% from 120,000 last year. Next year's volume is expected to more than double to between 1.12 million and 1.13 million.

The market for such panels is booming thanks to surging sales of high-quality OLED gaming monitors amid explosive demand for games requiring vivid graphics and fast screen transition. This trend has prompted Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and the Taiwan-based PC, phone hardware and electronic components maker Asus to release their own OLED gaming monitors.

For example, Odyssey OLED G9, a 49-inch gaming monitor released in June by Samsung Electronics, saw sales take off as the preferred model of noted esports player Lee Sang-hyuk, aka Faker, of League of Legends (LoL), a hit multiplayer battle arena online game played by 200 million people worldwide. On Wednesday, LG Electronics released its LG UltraGear Gaming LoL Edition Monitor with a 27-inch OLED screen.

Despite a price tag of over 1 million won ($739) each, both models are seeing soaring sales.

Samsung Display and LG Display are the world’s only two companies that manufacture OLED panels for monitors. The latter is mass producing 27- and 45-inch panels this year while the former is churning out high-resolution 34- and 49-inch quantum dot (QD)-OLED models.

Samsung Display and LG Display will lead the market’s growth by launching mass production next year of 31.5-inch OLED products, TrendForce said.

Both display companies are expected to see a major boost in overall performance thanks to sales of OLED gaming monitors.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com