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Company News >> Boe, Samsung Fight over Apple 19th,May,2023

How time has changed, the OLED industry in China and South Korea has come to a winner so quickly. Boe and Samsung will be the main players, and the winner is not just about the ups and downs of the two companies.

The patent dispute begins today

Following a lawsuit filed by BOE earlier this month, the Intellectual Property Division of Chongqing First Intermediate People's Court will hear a public hearing today on a case involving intellectual property infringement by three BOE companies. Details of the lawsuit have not been disclosed, the Korea Herald Tribune said, citing unnamed sources.

In response to this, Thelec's article argues that BOE's patent counterattack in Chongqing gives Samsung an excuse and an opportunity to expand the war. It is also worth noting that the patent war and OLED competition between BOE and Samsung is not purely a competition between the two companies, but also a tussle between two major industrial ecosystems, or even between China and the United States.

Samsung is unlikely to win the lawsuit in China, but it may have some opportunities and advantages in other regions, according to South Korea. For example, they expect the OLED sector to come under scrutiny in America, where the technology was first developed and where OneWorld is still the most important supplier of OLED materials.

But in a stroke of genius, BOE had planned to do this two years ago, and purchased some of Huanyu's equipment in advance. Now, with all the interests involved, killing a thousand enemies at the expense of a hundred dollars is not what they want to see.

Apple, on the other hand, is unlikely to ignore the issue in the United States, because it is an important part of its "game" with Samsung.

Apple supports BOE to counterbalance Samsung

For a long time, Apple has been bitter about Samsung's display OLED monopoly. The early iPhone used an LCD screen, and suppliers included South Korea's LG and Japan's Sharp and JDI. A major turning point came in 2017, when Apple entered the OLED screen era with the iPhone X, and when Samsung became the core OLED screen supplier for Apple's iPhone.

In the same year, BOE officially put into operation the first 6-generation flexible AMOLED production line in China in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, becoming the earliest enterprise in the field of OLED screens in China.

From the iPhone X to today's iPhone 14 series, Samsung supplies OLED screens almost exclusively for the Pro and Pro Max high-end models of Apple's iPhone, with LGD usually supplying screens for the standard version. Boe did not start to appear in Apple's Top 200 suppliers list until 2020.

It is not that Apple has not thought of cultivating other suppliers to compete with Samsung for a long time, but LGD has been obsessed with large-size OLED research and development for many years, and does not want to make too much investment in small-size flexible AMOLED, not to mention now deep in losses, debt crisis, self-protection is a problem.

Japan is even bleaker, with JDI losing money for nine consecutive years. JOLED filed for bankruptcy and sold OLed-related technology to JDI at a bargain price, leaving it far less competitive than it was at its peak.

So if Apple had to build a supplier to compete with Samsung, BOE would be the perfect choice.

From Apple's point of view, BOE's screens have a cost advantage over Samsung's.

According to the iPhone 13 Pro, one Samsung OLED screen costs about $105, and the entire iPhone 13 Pro costs about $570 in components, making up nearly a fifth of the screen. At present, the official repair price of the external screen of the iPhone 14 Pro Max is about 3,200 yuan, about equal to the price of a mid - and high-end Android phone.

In addition, BOE's higher order ratio can further enhance its bargaining power with Samsung, which is also one of the underlying logic of the complex game between Apple and its suppliers.

But what Samsung did not expect was that BOE rose so fast in the face of the inevitable trend of a leading terminal company like Apple. The most obvious example is that almost all major handset makers, including Samsung Electronics, have adopted BOE OLED as a weapon to enter the once high-end mobile phone market.