South Korea’s OLED material businesses are strengthening their competitive edges through ‘Choices and Concentration’ strategy. As growth of OLED material market is slower than expectation and as competition between global material businesses gets fiercer, they decided to put their focus on material layer that can help them to take leading position.

According to industry, OLED material industry is putting all of its efforts on particular areas of material layer to differentiate itself from a competition with global material businesses. Instead of going after all of 7 OLED material layers, it is going to establish foundation by first focusing on particular areas that can help them to preoccupy markets within a short period of time.

Duksan Neolux, which is a company that specializes in OLED material and split itself from Duksan Hi-Metal this year, is focusing on securing competitive edge in red phosphorescence material out of Hole Transport Layer (HTL) and Emission Layer (EML) that are related to OLED. Although it is still continuously developing green and blue materials, it decided to primarily focus on increasing shares of red phosphorescence material because it thinks that there are limitations in putting all of company’s abilities to prepare for global material businesses. Duksan Neolux is currently competing fiercely against Dow Chemical in this field.

“We are currently focusing first on supplying HTL, red phosphorescence, and supplementary layer material that is located between HTL and EML. We will continually work hard on expanding our shares in markets by establishing a system that can quickly correspond to customers’ demands.” said Director Lee Bum Sung of Duksan Neolux.

Samsung SDI is speeding up its business by also producing green phosphorescence product that is a main material of OLED’s EML and currently mass-producing 5 tons of this material per year at electronic material workplace in Gumi. Although global material businesses have been monopolizing this market until now, Samsung SDI is now able to supply products to Samsung Display and Chinese display manufacturer as it was successful in developing its own technologies. As Samsung recently released Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, it is estimated that profitability of OLED material business in second half will be greatly improved.

Doosan Electro-Materials, which is currently developing OLED material area as a major business that will have huge influence on other businesses in the future, is currently on a roll in Hole Blocking Layer (HBL) market out of composite layers. It had focused on supplying green fluorescence material earlier, but it had to stop its supply because Samsung SDI’s materials were chosen over its materials. However it is receiving attention again as it released HBL product in which electricity consumption is greatly reduced compared to its competitors’ products. HBL is able to prolong battery’s life due to its low driving voltage, and Doosan monopolized in supplying HBL for Galaxy S6.

“Although we are actively doing mass-production as composite layer material is being chosen recently, we are going to focus on improving our competitive edge in market in long-term by developing EML material that has high profitability and level of difficulty in technologies.” said Executive Director Jang Tae Seok of Doosan’s OLED Business Department.

LG Chemicals, which is also actively working on localizing OLED materials, is also focusing on supplying composite layer materials such as HIL, EIL, and others.

“Because material is one thing that is holding back OLED TV market, Korean and foreign businesses are putting all of their abilities in developing materials. Now is the time when much investment is needed to hold a leadership in markets by having differentiated technologies as bases.” said a person in this industry.

Market for organic materials for OLED panels was valued at $58 million in first half of this year according to market investigative business called IHS, and IHS is predicting that it will grow 3 times more and be valued up to $165 million in second half. It is also predicting that mass-production of OLED panels will go on full-scale starting from first half of next year considering the fact that market for organic materials for OLED panels will precede for about 3 to 6 months.

Staff Reporter Sung, Hyeonhee | sunghh@etnews.com