Paweł Koper
The last months of 2025 were an intensive working period for Samsung Display, which has clearly paid off in the Excel sheets. The Korean giant has just shared its results for the fourth quarter, and although the numbers are impressive, there is a note of caution in the company's statement. It seems that the market which has until now driven the company (smartphone screens) is starting to send warning signals.
Solid profit under the "Premium" banner
Samsung Display concluded the fourth quarter of 2025 with an operating profit of 1.82 trillion won, which translates to approximately 1.4 billion dollars. Total revenues for the display segment amounted to 9.05 trillion won. This result demonstrates that the "quality over quantity" strategy is effective. The profit was primarily generated through the sale of the most advanced OLED panels for high-end smartphones and the increasing significance of QD-OLED panels in televisions. The latter are increasingly displacing traditional solutions in the luxury television and professional gaming monitor segment.
Industry Warning
Despite a full treasury, the company does not hide that the upcoming times may be more challenging. As reported by the industry service OLED-info in its report and can be read from the press release 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 'run out of steam', the giant is putting everything on the IT market: that is, laptops and monitors, which are set to undergo a mass transition to AMOLED and QD-OLED screens. This also explains the rich offering in monitors from Samsung Electronics that we saw at the CES 2026 exhibition:
The next pillar is meant to be automotive. New cars are turning into "smartphones on wheels," and Samsung aims to be the one that provides the most impressive and durable displays for digital dashboards. If forecasts of weaker demand for phones prove correct, it is our desks and dashboards in cars that will become the new battleground for Korean dominance.
Source: Samsung, OLED-info
