'OLED Pioneer' South Korea Achieves Market Share Rebound After 10 Years

68.7% Market Share Last Year, Up 1.5%p Year-on-Year
High-End Diversification, Including Gaming, Proves Effective

It has been found that South Korea's market share in the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) sector, which had been declining annually due to aggressive competition from China, has rebounded for the first time in ten years.

The Korea Display Industry Association announced on the 28th, citing an analysis of data from the market research firm OMDIA, that South Korea's OLED market share reached 68.7% last year, up 1.5 percentage points from 67.2% the previous year. This marks the first reversal in the downward trend that had persisted for about nine years since China entered the market in 2015.

This increase in market share is attributed to diversification in the high-end market. Korean companies significantly expanded production of low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) OLEDs, a low-power technology, thereby dominating the premium smartphone market. In fact, Korea's share of OLED panel supply for Apple smartphones rose from 80.7% in 2024 to 85.9% in 2025, while China's share fell from 19.3% to 14.1% during the same period.

Additionally, Korean companies have raised entry barriers in the high-end market by promoting innovative technologies such as COE technology, which reduces thickness and increases brightness without a polarizer, and primary RGB (red, green, blue) tandem technology, which maximizes picture quality and lifespan for large-sized OLEDs.

A strategy of diversifying demand markets also proved successful. By expanding applications beyond the mainstay mobile and TV markets to high value-added segments such as gaming monitors, rollable laptops, and premium automobiles, Korean companies achieved greater market share. Specifically, revenue in the IT sector is projected to rise from 4.17 billion dollars in 2024 to 4.43 billion dollars in 2025, while automotive OLED revenue is set to grow sharply from 670 million dollars to 810 million dollars during the same period.

Meanwhile, China, which has driven rapid domestic market growth using a large-scale volume strategy focused on low-cost OLEDs, is now facing limitations in market expansion due to difficulties entering the high-end segment because of a technology gap with Korea.

However, due to a strategic reduction in liquid crystal display (LCD) production with a focus on high value-added products, South Korea's overall display market share (including LCDs) fell by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year to 31.7% last year.

The association projected that, with new IT devices such as foldable phones and laptops scheduled for release this year and the start of the world's first mass production of 8.6th-generation OLEDs for IT applications, domestic companies will secure overwhelming price competitiveness and supply advantages.

Lee Seungwoo, Vice Chairman of the Korea Display Industry Association, stated, "The expansion of OLED market share is the result of relentless investment and technological innovation in next-generation technologies by our companies, despite intense competition from China." He added, "The cutting-edge technology possessed by our industry will be a crucial turning point in solidifying our dominance in the global OLED market." He further emphasized, "As companies continue to invest in future technologies to maintain their technological lead and secure dominance in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), government policy support for corporate investment should also be expanded."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.