Crouching tiger, hidden dragon.
How China revels its potential on the display market?
Noctiluca took part in International Conference on Display Technology in China, which inspired us to write a blog post about the immense potential of the Chinese market in the display industry and beyond. China is currently experiencing tremendous growth, with financial and numerical data confirming this fact. In 2021, there were 1,687 researchers per million inhabitants in China —a significant increase from just a decade earlier when the number stood at 974. The US is still the largest absolute investor in R&D, but China is approaching the level of the US fast. Over the period 1996-2020, Chinese R&D expenditure grew the strongest by far: almost 3300% vs. 230% in the US!
YES for innovation
What’s the reason for the growth? Taking innovation as the strategic direction of growth by the Chinese government. This is China, where investments in electric vehicles are flourishing, gaining popularity due to their excellent performance at competitive prices. This is where investments in AI are accelerating, as evidenced by the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which has dominated headlines and app charts at the beginning of 2025 thanks to its new AI chatbot.
Finally, this is China, where huge amounts of money are poured into new technologies, with many global giants having Chinese origins. Among them are OLED display manufacturers, further cementing China’s position as a leader in innovation. In this article we will focus on this market.
Growth of OLED market and a long list of applications
The global OLED market size accounted for over USD 56 billion in 2024, is predicted to reach around USD 344 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 19.85% from 2024 to 2034.
Thanks to years of R&D work of great scientists and producers, OLED displays have become ubiquitous in modern electronics, finding applications in smartphones, televisions, wearable devices, and more. Besides this typical uses the technology becomes indispensable in medical equipment, production lines, the military, automotive and lighting solutions, offering energy-efficient and aesthetically attractive alternatives to traditional lighting technologies. What’s more, the flexibility and thinness of OLED panels have enabled innovative design possibilities, such as foldable and rollable displays.
The biggest players from China
The diverse applications and enormous potential for growth of the display market are the reasons why China has also decided to bet on the development of this technology. What’s important, thanks to huge R&D investments and the market success of the Chinese producers, China is continuously enhancing quality and narrowing the technology gap even further. All this led to a fact that currently it manufactures between 20 and 50% of the of final displays (depending on the type of device).
Among top OLED manufacturers in China are BOE, CSOT (CSOT’s parent company is TCL), Tianma and Visionox . When it comes to smartphones’ market it is estimated that shipments of Chinese AMOLED panels will exceed those of Korean counterparts in 2025 and attain a market share of 50.2%. Among top Chinese smartphones producers are Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme, but the list is much longer.
It’s worth mentioning that in the recent months Apple announced an extension of its long-term partnership with the Chinese display industry, including its supply chain partners.
On top of the above, unlike Korea, China boasts of a decent broader OLED manufacturing base beyond Tier 1 companies, that operate in OEM model, rather than invest into consumer brands. These players offer often products that are inconspicuously integrated into home appliances, office equipment or lighting fixtures, successfully competing with older and more commodified generations of LED based devices.
The entire cake for China?
Apart from China on podium as key world display panel makers there is also South Korea and Taiwan, while US only has smaller players specializing in niche markets, not to mention UE that has almost non-existent footprint. With this being said, the value chain and supply chain for R&D and production is very complex and thus leading suppliers of display manufacturing equipment are predominantly non-Chinese companies.
For chemical compound suppliers like Noctiluca important is the fact that China accounts for the majority of global display panel production, but its local high performance materials manufactures supply only 10% of chemical materials used in these devices.
By developing chemical compounds for products of the future, we see great opportunities for collaborations and partnerships in this market. Noctiluca already has such collaborations or relationships today and will develop them in the coming weeks, months and years.
List of sources
- Images: International Conference on Display Technologies photo gallery https://www.statista.com/statistics/239158/number-of-researchers-in-the-r-d-sector-per-million-inhabitants-in-china/
- https://www.rathenau.nl/en/science-figures/process/collaboration/china-scientific-superpower-making
- https://www.precedenceresearch.com/oled-market
- https://techchannel.news/chinese-amoled-panel-makers-to-overtake-korean-counterparts-in-2025/
- https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/599454