Samsung to acquire more OLED display drivers from Taiwan's UMC

Samsung has reportedly addressed one of its OLED supply bottlenecks for 2023 through a new partnership with Taiwan's UMC. In a bid to increase its production capacity next year, Samsung will acquire additional DDIs (display driver integrated chips) for OLED panels from UMC. The latter company will manufacture DDIs for Samsung on a 28nm process.

In addition, Samsung is reportedly shipping new DDI manufacturing equipment to UMC's P6 foundry in Taiwan to help the company increase production capacity next year. This also signals a long-term collaboration between the two companies. (via The Elec)

Next year, Samsung will reportedly have a manufacturing capacity of 13,000 OLED DDIs per month. This will be unchanged from 2022. However, in addition to these 13,000 monthly DDIs, Samsung will also acquire 15,000 DDIs per month from Taiwan's UMC.

Samsung's LSI Division is the market's biggest DDI supplier, according to Omdia. In Q1 2022, the company had a 55% market share. Samsung was followed by LX Semicon with a share of 14.6%, and Novatech, which had an 11.6% share.

Whether or not this new alleged alliance between Samsung and UMC has anything to do with Apple's increased demand for OLED panels for the iPhone 14 series is unclear. Shortly after the iPhone 14 lineup was unveiled, it was reported that Apple increased its orders for OLED panels from Samsung from 130 million units to 149 million.

Mihai Matei - Senior Editor

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First Samsung device: SGH-A800

Mihai is a blogger and column writer at SamMobile. His first Samsung phone was an A800 which took a lot of beating, and a part of him still misses the novelty of the clamshell design. In his free time, he enjoys watching shows, documentaries, and stand-up comedy; listening to music, taking walks, and occasionally playing old(er) video games.

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