OLED monitor display shipments significantly increased in 2023, following an upsurge of 415% year-over-year (YoY), according to Omdia’s Monitor Display & OEM Market Tracker. This trend is set to continue with Omdia forecasting a 123% YoY increase in 2024, reaching 1.84 million units, driven by industry leaders Samsung Display and LG Display.
“OLED monitors are mostly used for gaming and have gained further traction following the inclusion of esports in the competition for the first time at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. This move marks the transformation of esports projects from a grassroots event to a recognized, official sporting event,” says Nick Jiang, Principal Analyst in Omdia’s Displays research practice.
Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted consumer behavior, leading to trends such as multiscreen interactions between laptops and monitors, and growing consumer demand for higher monitor specifications, including high resolution and refresh rates. Considering the product management cycle and the three-year after-sales service time for monitor products, Omdia expects the replacement cycle to gradually occur from 2024.
The market downturn in 2022 and 2023 posed significant challenges for monitor supply chain participants. Monitor brands have been committed to reducing inventory through various supply chain operations; the industry is currently entering a recovery period . After reaching a two-year low, the overall monitor market is expected to recover slowly in 2024, encompassing both commercial and consumer markets. This also presents certain market development opportunities for the expansion of OLED monitor products.
As consumer demand for better monitor specifications and the trend towards larger monitor sizes continue, there is an anticipated increase in LCD monitor panel prices. This will reduce the price difference between LCD and OLED monitors, indirectly making OLED technology more accessible. In addition, top tier monitor brands such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, LG Electronics, AOC/Philips, Asus, Acer, MSI and Gigabyte are incorporating more and more OLED displays into their product lineups for 2024. From a supply chain perspective, this trend helps reduce costs for both OEM and panel companies. The increase in OLED monitor displays from panel companies can be evenly distributed to the cost of panels, resulting in a decrease. For OLED monitor OEM companies, production costs can be reduced as multiple OLED monitor branded customers share the cost of tooling.
