International. After the arrival of the initial wave of foldable smartphones in 2019, the global foldable active matrix organic light-emitting diode (Amoled) display panels is poised for explosive growth in 2020, with a dizzying 455 percent increase this year.
Foldable Amoled display shipments worldwide will increase to 3.9 million units in 2020, up from 700,000 in 2019, according to the Omdia Foldable Display Technology & Market – 2020 report. Shipments will continue to increase at a rapid pace over the next five years, reaching 73.1 million by 2025.
"Foldable Amoleds are unleashing a wave of innovation in smartphone form factors, allowing small devices to support very large screens," said Jerry Kang, senior principal analyst at Omdia. "The foldable screen smartphone market started in 2019, with the introduction of models from Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo and Royole. However, shipments were limited last year due to the extremely high prices and low reliability of these models. Despite these challenges, smartphone makers are increasingly using foldable Amoled displays in 2020, as they spread the technology across their product lines."
With their shipments restricted, foldable displays will account for only a small proportion of the flexible OLED market this year, accounting for just 1.3 percent of the flexible OLED business of 311.9 million units. This leaves many growth opportunities for foldable displays in the coming years as they solve their manufacturing problems.
"Foldable displays are currently difficult to mass-produce with high reliability and low cost due to their extreme mechanical and optical properties," Kang said. "As a result, smartphone makers are using foldable displays with lower resolutions than they employ in their flagship models, enabling manufacturing at lower costs and with better performances than high-resolution display panels."
Since 2019, six devices with foldable screens have been launched on the market. However, most of these devices had their release date postponed or suffered damage issues. To address these challenges, panel suppliers and smartphone manufacturers are striving to improve the reliability of foldable displays to increase the demand for foldable displays.
"The foldable display market could grow much more rapidly if the reliability of folding cover lenses, touch sensors and polarizing films is improved," Kang said. "To improve the durability of the folding display, panel suppliers must adopt innovations including ultra-thin glass covers (UTG), touch sensor in thin film encapsulation (TSP in TFE) and color filter in thin film encapsulation (CF in TFE)."
