Pushed by AI, Samsung aims to cut OLED power consumption in half

According to Samsung Display boss Lee Cheong, OLED and AI walk hand-in-hand, and future advancements in the OLED display department will help drive AI forward, particularly for mobile devices.

The era of AI require power-efficient devices that can offer vivid picture quality “indistinguishable from reality” and have large screens in highly portable form factors. As Mr. Cheong explained at IMID 2024, “The perfect display that meets these conditions is OLED.”

Future OLED displays to boast +50% efficiency gains

When Samsung developed the world's first display technology that didn't need a polarizing film, it improved power consumption by more than 30%, Lee Cheong said at the IMID 2024 conference last week.

However, the company's efforts to improve power efficiency haven't stopped. And in the future, Samsung Display aims to reduce the power necessities of OLED display to “less than half of the current level.”

On-device AI processing requires significant power levels, and one of the best ways to support AI is by making OLED displays that have greater efficiency. With future Samsung OLED panels aiming to reduce power consumption by more than 50%, all that energy gained will be free to be used by AI.

Samsung Display also said that the 6G era, together with the latest advancements in AI, will increase the need for large-screen devices, and the company reminded us that it is “developing various form factor products, such as double-folding, multi-foldable, and rollable.” We've seen these types of prototype devices being demoed by Samsung Display at various trade shows in recent years.

Furthermore, Samsung also touched on the fact that microdisplays for XR (mixed reality) devices could serve portable and large-screen devices in the future. Price and weight are the tallest barriers right now, but “the XR device market will show tremendous growth” once these barriers are lifted.