Display manufacturer BOE has started mass production at its new OLED plant, an 8.6-generation-panel-producing behemoth said to be the first of its kind in China.
The plant will produce 10 million OLED panels this year alone, according to FlatpanelsHD, and significantly more in the second year of its operation. The plant took just over two years to build, cost roughly 63 million RMB (around $9.3 billion) and resides in Chengdu.
Representatives from Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, ZTE, Transsion, Xiaomi and Nothing reportedly attended the opening ceremony, indicating that each will be using the OLED panels produced.
One of the first is said to be a 14-inch OLED panel for Asus, Acer, and Lenovo laptops. The high-end products (being 8.6-gen offerings) will feature stacked tandem panel layers utilising Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide (LTPO), and support 240 Hz VRR refresh rates.
At first, the focus will be on small to medium-sized OLED panels, with no timelines currently announced for TV-sized variants. The plant will also have competition, as Samsung Display booted up a similar 8.6-gen facility in South Korea earlier this year. TCL and Visionox also have 8.6-gen OLED panel plants in the works, so it looks like it won't be long before we're flooded with even more OLED displays from a variety of sources.
This is likely a very good thing for those of us with a tasty new OLED in mind, particularly in our next gaming laptops. Vast numbers of new, high-specced panels entering the market will hopefully lead to some very competitive pricing, and we've already seen some smaller OLED gaming monitors dropping to much more reasonable money over the last few months.
Bring on the OLED pricing revolution, that's what I say. It's been long enough coming, at the very least.
