With China closing in, picture quality alone won’t cut it: South Korea’s display industry enters round two with form factors and AI

[Financial News] As Chinese display makers intensify their push, the battleground for South Korea’s display industry is shifting from picture quality to “form and intelligence.” With it becoming harder to maintain the gap through picture-quality competitiveness led by OLED alone, analysts say the industry needs to combine innovations in form factors—including foldable, rollable and stretchable displays—with AI-based interfaces to get ahead in new markets.
According to a report titled “Strategies for Display Applications Through Form-Factor Innovation,” published on the 7th by Samjong KPMG, the global display industry’s competitive landscape is moving beyond the first round of competition centered on picture quality and entering a second round that combines form factors with AI interfaces.
South Korean companies retain an advantage in the premium market, led by OLED, but as Chinese companies rapidly advance their technology, it is becoming harder to differentiate through conventional picture-quality competition alone. The assessment is that competitiveness will ultimately depend not just on how clearly screens display images, but on “where, in what form and how intelligently they can be applied.”
Samjong KPMG outlined a “three-layer innovation framework” for future display competitiveness: picture quality, form factors and AI interfaces. Picture quality remains the foundation. Technologies that improve brightness, color reproduction, response time and power efficiency provide the basis for implementing new form factors and AI interfaces. That is why premium technologies such as RGB LED, QD-OLED and Tandem OLED need to be continuously advanced.
Form factors are key to expanding the market. Technological progress from curved to foldable, rollable and stretchable displays is changing the very spaces where displays can be used. Demand is expanding beyond traditional smartphones and TVs to vehicles, wearable devices, extended reality (XR), healthcare and humanoid robots.
South Korean companies have already entered the form-factor race. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is expanding its foldable smartphone lineup, while LG Display Co., Ltd. has been exploring new applications through its rollable large-display technology. Samsung Display Co., Ltd. is also showcasing stretchable technology and focusing on overcoming the limitations of conventional flat screens.
Kang In-hye, Vice President and Tech Industry Leader at Samjong KPMG, said, “The global display industry is entering a period in which it is difficult to differentiate on picture quality alone.” She added, “South Korean display companies need to maintain their competitiveness in premium technologies, including OLED, while gradually building mass-production capabilities for a range of form factors and the ability to develop AI-based solutions for different industries.”
[email protected] Kim Hyun-jung Reporter