South Korea’s two display giants Samsung Display and LG Display are aggressively bumping up research & development (R&D) spending on next-generation display technologies to keep comfortable lead over Chinese rivals who have been eager on the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display front after dominating the liquid crystal display (LCD) market.

According to industry sources on Tuesday, Samsung Electronics Co. is building a two-track strategy of focusing on quantum-dot (QD) and micro light-emitting diode (LED) displays for its future TV roadmap. Samsung has 10 years of experience in developing QD display and boasts its leadership in micro LED technology thanks to its worldly renowned semiconductor technology.

Its panel-making unit Samsung Display is the world’s No. 1 in making small- and mid-size OLED panels for smartphones or other small devices, but falls behind its rival LG in large-size OLED panels for TV sets. It instead is accelerating shift toward the development of QD and micro LED display technologies with massive R&D investments in such technologies to win over the tight race with Chinese peers in the LCD market.

As part of the efforts, Samsung Display recently unveiled a plan to invest 13.1 trillion won over the next six years. The company recently started converting its existing L8 LCD production lines in Asan, South Chungcheong Province into the fab to produce QD displays. It also acquired a local research team’s patented micro LED technology for almost 10 billion won early this year.

Samsung Venture Investment Corp., an investment affiliate of Samsung Electronics, invested in U.S.-based micro LED display technology startup iBeam Materials in September in hopes to achieve a breakthrough in mass production of the next-generation, self-emissive display technology.

Micro LED is a new flat panel display that consists of arrays of self-emitting microscopic LEDs. It is known that the micro LED display offers better contrast, response time and energy efficiency, compared to its rival displays, and can be tailored to any size and aspect ratio.

Samsung Electronics and Samsung Display are grooming micro LED, along with QD OLED, as the next-generation alternatives to the rivaling OLEDs. Samsung Electronics is one of the world’s very few companies that can produce micro LED displays and vowed to expand its application in home appliances from next year.

LG Display also is pouring a large sum of money in R&D to maintain its lead in the OLED display market despite its weak bottom line due to money-losing LCD business. Its cumulative R&D spending for the first nine months of this year hit a record high of 1.73 trillion won this year. It has expanded the spending from 6.7 percent of its total revenue in 2017 to 9 percent in 2018 and 10.2 percent this year.

To improve its financial fundamentals, the company in October trimmed top executives and teams across the board by 25 percent in its annual reshuffles. But the company enhanced the role of the division headed by its chief technology officer for R&D on next-generation display technologies.

It will focus not only to cement its leadership in the OLED market but pave the market for rollable, transparent OLED displays and plastic OLED (POLED) displays for vehicles. LG Display aims to start mass production of POLED displays as early as the end of this year.

The two Korean display giants are aggressively bumping up their R&D spending on the next-generation display technologies because their Chinese peers are rapidly moving up on in the OLED market. To fend off the lingering oversupply issue in the LCD market, Chinese display makers have recently shifted their focus to OLED displays.

By Hwang Soon-min and Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]