In the weirdest pitch for a buddy movie this year Samsung and LG are getting together to stop China taking over the OLED panel market

The UK's venerable financial pink paper, the Financial Times, reckons that Samsung and LG have decided to stop fighting each other for OLED display dominance and work together. The reason for this unlikely outbreak of fraternal cooperation? The looming threat from China.

Exactly what this all means for OLED panels in PC monitors is complicated. Hold that thought for a moment. The FT points out [paywall] that China is already well on the way to forcing Samsung and LG out of the LCD display market. Apparently, Samsung closed its last LCD panel factory in China in 2021 while LG is said to be looking to sell its last LCD plant in the China.

Moreover, the FT has data showing that China expanded to owning around 60% of the global market for LCD displays by the first half of last year, with Taiwan next on about 25% and South Korea having shrunk from over 30% in 2018 to around 10%.

For now, South Korea remains dominant in OLED manufacture, but the trend lines are obvious enough. In 2018, China had but a mere few percentage points of the market with the rest almost all owned by South Korea. By the first half of 2023, it had nearly 25% market share, that growth coming entirely at the expense of South Korea. Going by the current trend, you'd expect China to be the dominant player in OLED in about five years.

So, what do we make of all this? There are reasons to worry, for sure. The FT claims that China's strategy has been to massively subsidise its display industry, effectively making huge losses in the pursuit of market share. The idea is that once China owns the market, it can begin to crank pricing up to profitable levels.

That all implies the current display market is artificially skewed and that, eventually, screens could become more costly once China's masterplan is achieved.

Then there's the question of quality. China's OLED panels offer nowhere near the performance of those from LG and Samsung, the FT says, but they are far, far cheaper. We can't comment on that—all of