With Gen 8.6 FMM adoption, OLED manufacturers drive 154% surge

With leading OLED panel manufacturers formalizing Gen 8.6 fine metal mask (FMM) based OLED factories the FPD equipment market is forecast to rebound 154% to $7.7 billion in 2024 and stabilize in 2025 and 2026, according to Omdia’s recently released OLED and LCD Supply Demand and Equipment Tracker.

“The advanced and complex manufacturing technology required to fabricate OLED panels for notebook and tablet applications using the FMM patterning approach on large Gen 8.6 substrates drives high equipment costs for a relatively small amount of new capacity. In 2024, Samsung’s 15,000 substrates per month A6 fab is by far the largest single investment, accounting for 32% of all FPD equipment spending”, commented Charles Annis, Omdia’s Display Research Practice Leader.

Other significant investments in FPD capital equipment this year include China Star T9 phase 2, Tianma TM19, and BOE B20.

On November 29, 2023, BOE officially announced its own G8.6 FMM OLED factory, B16; most of the process equipment for the first phase of 16,000 substrates per month of capacity will be installed in 2025.

“B16’s equipment costs are modeled to be about 18% higher than Samsung’s A6 factory. B16 will adopt a more equipment intense low-temperature poly oxide (LTPO) array process than Samsung’s planned oxide thin film transistor (TFT) approach, it will have some capability to produce fully flexible displays, and it will presumably include more module process equipment”, added Annis.

In future years, expansion at these two factories will further boost FPD equipment spending.

At the same time, competitors are planning their own Gen 8.6 OLED factories using alternative technologies such as fine photomask patterning (FPM). Omdia currently assumes both Visionox and Japan Display will build FPM factories in 2025. These along with expansion phases at BOE B20 and Tianma TM18 could push total equipment spending above 2024 levels. However, while B16 will start ordering machines shortly, the other forecast factories are still many months away from placing equipment orders; so whether their ambitious investment plans can be realized or not remains unconfirmed. Omdia