Paweł Koper
The last few months of 2025 have been a busy time for Samsung Display, and it's clearly paid off in the Excel sheets. The Korean giant has just shared its results for the fourth quarter, and while the numbers are impressive, there is a tone of caution in the company's announcement. It seems that the market that has previously driven the company (smartphone screens) is beginning to send warning signals.
Solid profit under the "Premium" sign
Samsung Display ended the fourth quarter of 2025 with an operating profit of 1.82 trillion won, which translates to around 1.4 billion dollars. Total revenue for the display segment reached 9.05 trillion won. This is a result that shows the "quality over quantity" strategy is working. The profit was mainly generated through the sale of the most advanced OLED panels for high-end smartphones and the growing significance of QD-OLED displays in televisions. The latter are increasingly supplanting traditional solutions in the luxury television and professional gaming monitor segment.
Industry Warning
Despite a full treasury, the company does not hide the fact that the upcoming period may be more challenging. As reported by the industry service OLED-info in its report and can be gleaned from the press release by Samsung Newsroom, the Korean manufacturer expects a decline in demand for OLED panels for smartphones. The reasons include not only market saturation but also increasing price pressure from Chinese competitors and the fact that users are replacing their devices with newer models less frequently.
New hope in IT and... cars?
What does a company do when its main market starts to slow down? It runs forward. Samsung is already announcing that the year 2026 will be marked by diversification. Since smartphones have "caught their breath," the giant is betting everything on the IT market: that is, laptops and monitors, which are set to make a mass switch to AMOLED and QD-OLED screens. This explains the rich offering of monitors from Samsung Electronics that we saw at CES 2026:
The next pillar is set to be automotive. New cars are turning into “smartphones on wheels,” and Samsung wants to be the one that delivers the most spectacular and durable displays for digital dashboards. If forecasts about weaker demand for phones prove true, then it will be our desks and dashboards in cars that become the new battleground for Korean dominance.
Source: Samsung, OLED-info
