Katarzyna Petru
Last week, LG Display officially announced that it will allocate 1.26 trillion won, which is around 680 million pounds, for the development and expansion of its next-generation OLED technology. Although the initial announcement was somewhat terse and did not reveal too many specifics, now – thanks to reports from South Korean industry media and analyses from companies like UBI Research – we are beginning to understand better the direction the company is heading and what the funds from this impressive investment will be used for.
RGB OLED not just for TVs. Time for smartphones and laptops
LG Display wants to expand the use of advanced four-layer display technology Primary RGB Tandem OLED, which has so far been mainly used in premium televisions. Now the company plans to transfer this technology to much smaller devices – smartphones, laptops, and perhaps in the future, also tablets and wearables.
According to Business Korea, a significant portion of funds will be directed towards expanding production facilities at LG's factory in Paju, South Korea. It is there that new production lines are to be established, adapted for manufacturing small and medium OLED panels, based on the same four-layer structure that has so far powered large TV panels.
New technologies LTPO 3.0 and COE. R&D also gets its slice of the pie
Importantly, the investment does not end with infrastructure. As reported by UBI Research, a significant portion of the funds will support research and development activities. LG Display plans to introduce LTPO 3.0 – a new version of Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide technology, which is crucial for mobile devices, particularly smartphones. LTPO 3.0 allows for smooth, dynamic switching of refresh rates (e.g. from 1 Hz to 120 Hz), which directly translates to energy savings and smoother interface performance.
The second key element of the planned modernization is the Colour on Encapsulation (COE) technology, which allows for the integration of colour filters directly into the encapsulation layer. In practice, this means that it becomes possible to remove the top polarisation layer, which not only simplifies the construction of the OLED panel but also affects its brightness, energy efficiency, and thickness. COE is a step towards even thinner, more energy-efficient displays – without compromising on image quality.
New factories in Vietnam and automated production
UBI Research also reports that LG Display is not limiting itself to modernising its Korean factory. The company plans to simultaneously build new production lines in its facilities in Vietnam. Investments in this region will not only concern production itself but also the optimisation of assembly processes and the implementation of a higher degree of automation. The aim is to increase efficiency, reduce unit costs, and enable faster responses to market demand.
Farewell to LCD. LG Display is now only playing in the OLED league
One of the more interesting threads in the background of the entire investment is the fact that its financing was made possible by the sale of the last LCD factory belonging to LG Display. This concerns the plant in Guangzhou (Canton) in China, which was sold to TCL CSOT for 2.2 trillion won. It is a symbolic closure of a certain stage – LG is definitively abandoning further development of LCD technology and is betting everything on OLEDs, particularly those from the higher-end range.
What does this mean for the market?
For the display industry, this is an important signal. LG Display is not only trying to catch up with Samsung in the mobile OLED screen category, but also wants to clearly establish its presence in the high-end segment – where quality, durability, and innovation matter. In the longer term, we can expect this technology to appear not only in LG products but also in devices from other manufacturers who use panels supplied by this company (including Apple, Lenovo, or HP).
As an LG Display spokesperson said in a conversation with UBI Research, this investment is not just about scaling production, but a strategic step towards creating highly valuable OLED products that could define the future of mobile screens in the coming years.
