LG today announced the opening of a new OLED panel production plant in Guangzhou, China. The mega factory will be capable of manufacturing ten million large-size OLED panels per year, so could 2020 be the year of the cheaper OLED TV?
LG expects the 427,000 m² factory to start by making 60,000 OLED sheets a month (mainly in 55-, 65- and 75-inch sizes). But that figure will quickly rise to 90,000 over the next couple of years. When combined with the output from LG's existing plant in Seoul, the Korean giant hopes to crank out a whopping 130,000 TV-sized OLED panels a month by 2022.
Thats good news folks, because it should bring the cost of OLED TVs down significantly in the next few years. Are we saying that OLED TVs will eventually end up costing less than the price of a cinema ticket? Sadly not. LG says while it shipped 2.9 million OLED panels last year, demand is set to rocket.
Global sales of OLED TV in 2020 are expected to top 5.5 million, before jumping to ten million units in 2022, according to market research firm IHS Markit. And you can expect LG to take centre stage, since it supplies panels to the likes of Sony, Philips and Hisense.
Still, LG's ambitious production targets are good news for wallets, bare walls and home cinema fans seeking larger, more immersive TV screens.
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