Paweł Koper
The last months of 2025 were a period of intense work for Samsung Display, which has clearly paid off in the Excel spreadsheets. The Korean giant has just shared its results for the fourth quarter, and while the numbers are impressive, there is a note of caution in the company's announcement. It seems that the market that has been driving the company (smartphone screens) is starting to send warning signals.
Solid Profit Under the Sign of “Premium”
Samsung Display ended the fourth quarter of 2025 with an operating profit of 1.82 trillion won, which translates to about 1.4 billion dollars. The total revenue of the display segment amounted to 9.05 trillion won. This result shows that the "quality over quantity" strategy is working. The profit was mainly generated from the sale of the most advanced OLED panels for high-end smartphones and the growing importance of QD-OLED panels in televisions. The latter are increasingly displacing traditional solutions in the luxury segment of televisions and monitors for professional gamers.
Industry Warning
Despite a full treasury, the company does not hide that the upcoming time may be more difficult. As reported by the industry service OLED-info in its report and can be read in the press release from 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.
A New Hope in IT and... Cars?
What does a company do when its main market starts to slow down? It charges ahead. Samsung is already announcing that the year 2026 will be marked by diversification. Since smartphones have "hit a wall," the giant is betting everything on the IT market: specifically, laptops and monitors that are set to transition en masse to AMOLED and QD-OLED screens. Moreover, this explains the rich offering in monitors from Samsung Electronics that we saw at CES 2026:
The next pillar is intended to be automotive. New cars are turning into "smartphones on wheels," and Samsung wants to be the one that provides them with the most impressive and durable displays for digital cockpits. If the forecasts for weaker demand for phones prove true, then our desks and dashboards in cars will become the new battleground for Korean dominance.
Source: Samsung, OLED-info
