Katarzyna Petru
Last week, LG Display officially announced that it will allocate 1.26 trillion won, or about 680 million pounds, for the development and expansion of its next-generation OLED technology. Although the initial announcement was rather 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 better understand the direction the company is heading and what exactly the funds from this impressive investment will be used for.
RGB OLED not just for televisions. Time for smartphones and laptops
LG Display wants to expand the application of advanced four-layer Primary RGB Tandem OLED display technology, which until now has been mainly used in premium televisions. The company now plans to transition this technology to much smaller devices – smartphones, laptops, and perhaps in the longer term, also tablets and wearables.
As reported by Business Korea, a significant portion of funds will be directed towards the expansion of production facilities at LG's factory in Paju, South Korea. This is where new production lines adapted for manufacturing small and medium OLED panels, based on the same four-layer structure that has so far powered large TV panels, are expected to be established.
New technologies LTPO 3.0 and COE. R&D is also getting its piece 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 the Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide technology, which is crucial for mobile devices, especially smartphones. LTPO 3.0 enables smooth, dynamic refresh rate switching (e.g., from 1 Hz to 120 Hz), which directly translates to energy savings and smoother interface operation.
The second key element of the planned modernization is the Colour on Encapsulation (COE) technology, which allows for the integration of color filters directly into the encapsulation layer. In practice, this means that it becomes possible to remove the top polarizing 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 informs that LG Display is not limiting itself to modernizing its Korean factory. The company plans to concurrently build new production lines in its facilities in Vietnam. Investments in this region will not only pertain to production itself but also to the optimization of assembly processes and the implementation of a higher degree of automation. The goal is to increase efficiency, reduce unit costs, and enable quicker responses to market demand.
Goodbye to LCD. LG Display is now playing only in the OLED league
One of the more interesting threads in the background of the entire investment is the fact that its funding was made possible by the sale of the last LCD factory owned by LG Display. This concerns the facility in Guangzhou (Canton) in China, which was sold to TCL CSOT for 2.2 trillion won. This is a symbolic closing of a certain chapter – LG is definitively abandoning further development of LCD technology and is placing everything on OLEDs, particularly those in the higher-end segment.
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 it also wants to clearly mark its presence in the high-end segment – where quality, durability, and innovation matter. In the long run, we can expect this technology to appear not only in LG products but also in devices from other manufacturers that use panels supplied by this company (including Apple, Lenovo, and HP).
As a spokesperson for LG Display told UBI Research, this investment is not just scaling production, but a strategic step toward creating highly valuable OLED products that can define the future of mobile screens for the coming years.
