Printed OLED may become the most competitive mid size OLED solution

In the current era of diverse new display technologies, OLED has become widely recognized as one of the next-generation mainstream display technologies due to its advantages such as high contrast, wide color gamut, lightweight, and flexibility. However, whether it is traditional FMM OLED (vapor deposited OLED), WOLED (white light OLED), or QD OLED (quantum dot OLED), they have all formed technical barriers in specific application fields. As a latecomer, TCL Huaxing firmly chose the IJP OLED (Printed OLED) technology route and was the first to achieve mass production, layout high generation, and target the future IT mid size market.

The mid size market covers fields such as laptops, monitors, cars, and tablets, with sufficient scale and the potential to pay a premium for new technologies or better product performance, "said Zhao Jun, Senior Vice President of TCL Technology and CEO of TCL Huaxing, in an interview with the media.

The performance and cost requirements of printed OLED and medium-sized products are highly compatible

From a technological perspective, printed OLEDs have the ability to cover the entire size. Zhao Jun emphasized that printed OLED is currently the only technology on the market that can cover small-sized phones to 65 and 75 inch large-sized TVs. This year, TCL Huaxing has also launched a full-size printed OLED family bucket.

When TCL Huaxing launched its OLED printing project 12 years ago, it initially focused on large sizes. However, after repeated commercial arguments, based on market demand and technological advantages, it made the decision to focus on medium sizes between 2021 and 2022. According to Zhao Jun, the development of the large-size market is already very mature, with a clear trend towards product standardization and high market price sensitivity. Consumers may find it difficult to afford printed OLEDs.

On the other hand, medium-sized applications such as gaming displays and car displays have high demands for product performance and cost. Printing OLED technology has become the key to solving the core pain points of high cost, low yield, and limited form of mid size OLEDs.

Among them, the process of printing OLED can be greatly simplified, and the construction and production costs are lower compared to traditional OLED, naturally possessing cost advantages. As Zhao Jun said, mid size products have both performance requirements and high cost demands. Printed OLEDs have significant room for expansion in terms of performance and have obvious cost advantages compared to existing OLEDs.

In addition, the resolution characteristics of printed OLEDs are highly compatible with the requirements of mid size applications. Zhao Jun introduced that the advantageous resolution of printed OLED is precisely between 50PPI and 350PPI, which is the golden distribution of medium resolution.

In terms of actual market expansion, TCL Huaxing has made adaptive and differentiated upgrades to its printing OLED capabilities based on the requirements of different applications, customers, and products, such as tablets, laptops, car mounted displays, etc., to maintain close collaboration with downstream customers.

Overall, based on the maturity of future technology and the pace of product development, TCL Huaxing will first focus on printing OLEDs in mid size, and then combine the progress of small-sized technology development represented by mobile phones and customer feedback to openly demonstrate the feasibility of using printed OLEDs in mobile phones.

Printed OLED has advantages that other OLEDs cannot replace

Observing the growth trend of OLED displays from shipment volume, according to the latest data from TrendForce's "AMOLED Industry Chain Report" and "AMOLED Market and Technology Trends Report", the global OLED display (monitor) shipment volume in the third quarter of 2025 was about 644000 units, a quarterly increase of 12%, and an annual growth rate of up to 65%.

At present, the main players in the display market include two Korean manufacturers, Samsung Display (QD OLED) and LGD (WOLED). Faced with the business opportunities in the mid size market, Samsung Display and LGD have gradually transferred some of their production capacity to displays, taking the lead in opening up the mid size OLED market. Based on their deep technical reserves and market experience, both parties have certain room for yield and cost, and the shipment volume of OLED display products is steadily increasing.

Faced with fierce market competition, TCL Huaxing maintains a clear understanding. Zhao Jun mentioned that the high generation OLED production line has experienced a wave of investment boom, and four high generation OLED production lines have been announced or are currently being promoted in the industry. It is expected to release production capacity between the second half of next year and 2028, which poses a real challenge to TCL Huaxing. However, the competitiveness of technology itself is the key to determining victory or defeat. Zhao Jun believes that printed OLED has advantages that cannot be replaced by other OLED technologies, including superior image quality (based on its pixel arrangement), cost, and efficiency.

Zhao Jun revealed that TCL Huaxing's confidence comes from the accumulation and breakthroughs in technological breakthroughs over the past 12 years. One important milestone is the switching of material systems: switching the entire EL material system from a polymer material system to a small molecule material system, which is a material system similar to traditional OLEDs. This switch has brought significant results: improved efficiency and ecological compatibility. Among them, the material has increased by about 2 to 3 times compared to previous polymer materials; Ecological compatibility can be achieved with existing mature OLED material systems, fully opening up the entire material ecological space.

From the perspective of mass production capacity, other high-end lines in the industry are expected to start mass production from the end of 2026 to 2027, and TCL Huaxing Printing OLED has actually achieved mass production first. In the future, based on the mass production experience of T12 and the experience of capacity and yield increase, although T8 started relatively late, its capacity increase and mass production capability may be released more quickly.

Zhao Jun believes that after addressing existing challenges and shortcomings, the advantages of printed OLED in terms of image quality, cost, and efficiency will become more prominent, and it will also be more competitive in the market. At least in the mid size field, it can become one of the most competitive and promising OLED technologies.

Power consumption and yield are the next key research goals

Despite the enormous potential of printed OLED, it is ultimately a new technology and its actual performance in the future is still unknown. There are still some challenges that need to be overcome before commercialization. However, since the development of printing OLED technology, TCL Huaxing has overcome challenges in multiple aspects such as PPI, lifespan, power consumption, and yield. Before the technology is fully mature, TCL Huaxing has also made it clear that further research is needed.

One is further improvement in power consumption. Zhao Jun pointed out that in medium-sized applications, tablets and laptops are mobile products that have extremely high requirements for battery life and power consumption; Especially after the introduction of AI into smart terminals, the increase in computing power consumption will require further reduction in screen power consumption. The goal of TCL Huaxing is to quickly reduce power consumption in a relatively short period of time and achieve a relatively high level, at least reaching the power consumption level of FMM OLED. In this regard, TCL Huaxing has achieved a 2-3 times efficiency improvement through material system switching and will continue to iterate.

The second is the rapid replication and improvement of yield. In the past year, TCL Huaxing has increased the yield of t12 (Wuhan G5.5 production line) from single digits to 70%, which is only a temporary achievement. Next, TCL Huaxing will strive to quickly replicate the knowledge, yield climbing experience, and ability of t12 to the t8 (Guangzhou G8.6 production line) production line.

In addition, Dr. Cao Weiran, Director of TCL Huaxing Printing OLED Center, also mentioned that upgrading from G5.5 to G8.6 requires TCL Huaxing to overcome the technical difficulties of large size uniformity and supply system construction.

In building an industrial chain ecosystem, TCL Huaxing has gradually achieved independent and controllable materials, and the next focus will be on equipment and component matching. In this regard, TCL Huaxing has always maintained close collaboration with customers: for example, in some upstream materials and equipment, TCL Huaxing points out the direction for manufacturers based on printing technology requirements and verifies it on TCL Huaxing's platform. In terms of equipment, TCL Huaxing collaborates with equipment manufacturers to optimize equipment solutions, including how to use AI to improve the high performance requirements of OLED printing equipment (which traditional methods cannot achieve).

In summary, TCL Huaxing is continuously building an open, autonomous, and collaborative industrial ecosystem. Through close collaboration with upstream material and equipment partners (such as introducing AI algorithms to optimize equipment performance), downstream customers (such as conducting differentiated technology upgrades), and industry partners, it ensures that printed OLED technology can transform from "user-friendly" to "excellent and outstanding", becoming the most competitive or best performing solution in OLED.