Samsung is ramping up its OLED production line, starting with an $8.9 billion investment.
Just recently, the South Korean brand has begun plans of replacing its existing equipment that manufactures liquid-crystal display or LCD with machinery for organic light-emitting diode or OLED.
Samsung Spends Big On OLED Displays For Apple And Others
The news comes from the South Korean website The Investor, and according to it, the 10 trillion won (or $8.9 billion) expense is for this year alone — approximately 3 trillion won (or $2.69 billion) to produce 30,000 OLED panels a month, 3 to 4 trillion won (or $3.58 billion at most) to expand its A3 flexible OLED production plant, and 1 trillion won (or $896 million) for its Vietnam plant.
This huge expenditure on the display technology makes sense because Apple is sourcing the materials from Samsung for the upcoming iPhone 8, where the inked deal allegedly involves 160 million OLED screens.
More than that, other manufacturers are following the Cupertino brand's decision for future phones as well.
"With Apple's iPhone adopting OLED for the first time this year, other smartphone makers, including those in China, are increasingly rolling out high-end models with OLED displays," the news outlet says.
The iPhone 8 is believed to be the first iPhone to be fitted with an OLED screen, as the iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus are rumored to retain LCD. That said, Apple is reportedly going to use OLED display for all of its phones by 2019.
However, the device is expected to have a relatively higher price than its predecessor because of the 60 percent increase in manufacturing the 3D Touch module for OLED compared with the components for LCD.
The word in town is that the Cupertino company will unveil the iPhone 8, iPhone 7s, and iPhone 7s Plus sometime in September.
Samsung Dominates The OLED Market
Currently, Samsung is the forerunner in the OLED game, holding more than 95 percent of the market and applying the panel to 70 percent of its smartphones.
The Investor says LG is set to become a competitor in this aspect in the foreseeable future, but Samsung will stay in the lead for many years to come.
Samsung Prevails Not Only In OLED But Also In Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835
As The Verge reported back in January, Samsung is hoarding Qualcomm's latest chip, the Snapdragon 835, and because of that, other manufacturers presumably had to use the processor's predecessor, the Snapdragon 821.
One notable example of this is how LG rolled out the G6 with the Snapdragon 821 instead of the Snapdragon 835.
What all this shows is that Samsung's decisions have led to the company's firm grasp on the smartphone industry in other respects aside from OLED.
It's also worth mentioning that Samsung recently took the wraps off the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, both of which sport Super AMOLED display and Snapdragon 835, depending on the market.
What do you think of the company's standing in the current smartphone market? Feel free to drop by our comments section below and let us know.
