Hundreds of billions of funds are "competing" for medium and small-sized IT panels.

Within less than two years, the total announced investment plans in the same niche area of China's display panel industry, the 8.6th generation OLED production line, have reached approximately 150 billion yuan.

Panel giants have all set their sights on the mid-sized IT panel market: BOE (000725.SZ) has planned related investments of 63 billion yuan, Visionox (002387.SZ) 55 billion yuan, and TCL CSOT 29.5 billion yuan...

Since November 2023, within less than two years, the total announced investment plans in the same niche area of China's display panel industry, the 8.6th generation OLED production line, have reached approximately 150 billion yuan. These massive investments are vying for the market dominance of mid-sized high-end displays for laptops, tablets, etc. in the coming years.

Among this series of huge investments, TCL CSOT is the latest entrant. On September 12, 2025, TCL Technology (000100.SZ) announced that it plans to jointly invest 29.5 billion yuan with its subsidiary TCL CSOT and the Guangzhou municipal government to build an 8.6th generation printed OLED (organic light-emitting diode, a display technology that can emit light actively when the material is powered) production line. In contrast to this huge investment, on May 7, 2024, in response to market rumors at that time, TCL Technology issued a clarification announcement, stating clearly that "the company (including its holding subsidiaries) currently has no investment plans to build a new 8th or 8.6th generation OLED production line."

Of course, there are also some differences in the industry's layout around the 8.6th generation OLED. On the one hand, there are BOE and Visionox, which have already started construction and are progressing rapidly, and Samsung Display, which will start trial operation at the end of 2025 and plans to achieve full mass production in the second quarter of 2026. On the other hand, there is LG Display, which has clearly postponed its investment in the 8.6th generation OLED due to prudent considerations of the market and finances.

In addition to the divergence in investment pace, panel giants also differ in their choices of technical routes. BOE and Samsung Display adhere to the most mature "evaporation" (a mainstream OLED panel manufacturing process that involves heating organic light-emitting materials into a gaseous state in a vacuum environment and allowing them to adhere to a glass substrate to form pixel points) route, which is the current mainstream choice in the market. TCL CSOT, however, has invested 29.5 billion yuan in the "printing" (an emerging OLED panel manufacturing process similar to inkjet printing, where liquid light-emitting materials are "printed" onto a glass substrate through high-precision nozzles) route. Visionox has also taken a different approach, betting 55 billion yuan on its self-developed "ViP" (a technology independently developed by Visionox that uses semiconductor lithography technology to replace some steps in the "evaporation" process) technology.

So, why are these huge investments pouring into the IT panel field, which is called the "mid-sized" market within the industry? What exactly has happened in the market in the past 16 months that has led to a substantial change in TCL CSOT's investment attitude towards the 8.6th generation line? Facing the common goal, what specific plans do the relevant enterprises have behind these different technical routes?

A Market That Must Be Captured

Why do investments worth hundreds of billions of yuan all point to the same thing - the 8.6th generation OLED production line?

To answer this question, we have to start with a piece of glass. All display panels are cut from a large raw material called a "glass substrate." "The so-called 'generation line' refers to the size specification of this glass substrate. The larger the size, the higher the generation," an industry insider told reporters.

Why are there different generations for a glass substrate? Simply put, it's a matter of size and efficiency. Cutting clothes from a large piece of cloth is always more cost-effective than piecing together small pieces of fabric. In the past, the size specifications of these generation lines were mainly used to cut LCD (liquid crystal display) TV panels of different sizes. However, the generations of panels are not simply linearly upgraded. The size of each generation line is customized for the highest cutting efficiency of the mainstream products at that time.

In the past, for the 6th generation line, the size of the glass substrate was usually 1500mm x 1800mm. This size was designed for cutting small screens like smartphones, with the highest efficiency. But if it is used to cut the much larger screens of laptops or tablets, it's like using the fabric for socks to make a suit, resulting in too much leftover material and serious waste.

According to the announcements of relevant listed companies, for the new 8.6th generation line, the size of the glass substrate is uniformly 2290mm x 2620mm. This size is optimized for efficiently cutting mid-sized IT panels. An industry chain insider told reporters that the number of 13.3-inch panels that can be cut from an 8.6th generation substrate is more than twice that of the 6th generation line.

The difference in efficiency will ultimately be reflected in the cost. Liu Yushi, a senior analyst at CINNO Research, told reporters that even if some 6th generation OLED production lines can be converted to produce mid-sized products on a small scale after transformation, their economic viability is still inferior to that of dedicated 8.6th generation IT production lines.

Panel manufacturers are well aware of this calculation. However, efficiency alone is not enough. There must also be a large enough market to justify investing hundreds of billions of yuan in building a new production line.

The turning point occurred on May 7, 2024, when Apple released the iPad Pro with an OLED screen. Once the most important customer in the industry made a move, everyone understood. Thus, the high-end IT market, which is the most profitable segment in consumer electronics, officially started the technological upgrade from LCD to OLED.

For manufacturers like BOE and TCL CSOT, a new market with huge potential that has been verified by the leading customer has emerged, which is sufficient reason for them to initiate huge investments.

However, a strong signal does not mean that all uncertainties have been eliminated. Just eight months after the release of Apple's OLED iPad Pro, in January 2025, Kim Sung-hyun, the chief financial officer of LG Display, still expressed a cautious attitude towards the market during an earnings conference call. He believed that there was "considerable uncertainty" in the demand for the 8.6th generation OLED in the IT field, and the company needed a "definite signal" from the market.

At the beginning of the release of Apple's OLED iPad Pro, the industry chain generally expected its annual shipment volume to exceed 10 million units. However, due to factors such as its higher-than-expected pricing and the overall weak demand for IT devices, this number was subsequently revised down to around 6.5 million units by multiple institutions.

In this context, LG Display ultimately decided to postpone its investment plan for 8.6th generation OLED equipment until 2026.

Obviously, there are differences in the interpretation of the "signal." For some manufacturers, what Apple "has done" is enough. For others, how well Apple's products "sell" is the "definite signal" to judge whether the market is truly mature.

These two different judgments are based on two different time perspectives. One is based on the present, focusing on the actual sales volume of the first product, while the other looks beyond the present and bets on long-term growth in the coming years.

Although the sales volume of the leading customer's products did not meet expectations, the technological upgrade wave from LCD to OLED in the mid-sized IT field is still substantial. According to data from market research firm Omdia, it is estimated that by 2030, the compound annual growth rate of AMOLED (a mainstream route of OLED technology, where each pixel can be independently controlled, resulting in faster response speeds) panels used in laptops will reach 33%. The compound annual growth rate of in-vehicle displays will be between 27% and 30.6%, and that of desktop monitors will also be 19%.

Meanwhile, the smartphone field, which is the main battlefield of OLED technology, has become a highly competitive market. Omdia predicts that in 2025, the proportion of smartphone AMOLED panel shipments in the global smartphone market will exceed 60%. In a market with such a high penetration rate, finding new growth points will naturally become an urgent task for all manufacturers.

Liu Yushi, a senior analyst at CINNO Research, told reporters that "the current mainstream 6th generation OLED production lines mainly produce products for the mobile phone market. When they were built, not much consideration was given to the demand for mid-sized products such as laptops. Some production lines do not even have the ability to produce mid-sized products. Even if some production lines can be converted to produce mid-sized products on a small scale after transformation, their economic viability is still inferior to that of dedicated 8.6th generation IT production lines."

Liu Yushi believes that to meet the growing demand for mid-sized OLEDs, "building dedicated production lines is still the preferred option."

On the one hand, there is a new growth point clearly led by leading manufacturers with huge market potential - the mid-sized IT market. On the other hand, the existing production tools (6th generation lines) can no longer meet the economic requirements of the new market in terms of cost. Thus, a huge and foreseeable production capacity gap lies in front of everyone.

For manufacturers like BOE and TCL CSOT, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. Whoever can be the first to build a dedicated 8.6th generation OLED production line and stably produce products with both quality and cost advantages will be able to gain the greatest initiative in this upcoming new cycle.

This market must be captured. The only questions are how and with what means.

The Divergent Evolution of Three Paths

When making these investment decisions worth hundreds of billions of yuan, the operating conditions and financial resources of each manufacturer vary.

Judging from the performance in the first half of 2025, several major mainland Chinese panel manufacturers are generally on an upward or improving trajectory. BOE achieved operating revenue of 101.278 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.45%, and its net profit attributable to shareholders was 3.247 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.15%. Shenzhen Tianma (000050.SZ) turned a profit in the same period, with a net profit attributable to shareholders of 206 million yuan, and its revenue increased by 9.93% year-on-year to 17.475 billion yuan. Visionox's operating revenue was 4.121 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.79%, and the gross profit margin of its OLED products increased by 10.98 percentage points year-on-year.

In contrast, the situation of LG Display is more complex. According to its semi-annual report data, although its loss narrowed significantly by 85% year-on-year, its total revenue in the first half of 2025 decreased slightly by 3% year-on-year, and the company still posted an overall loss. In the second quarter of 2025, LG Display recorded an operating loss again, interrupting its previous two consecutive quarters of profit.

Different financial resources have led panel manufacturers to choose different paths when facing the same market.

The first path is to bet heavily on "certainty."

The representative manufacturers in this regard are BOE and Samsung Display. Their common choice is to invest heavily in the most mature "evaporation" process in the industry, which has been repeatedly verified on the 6th generation line. BOE's investment is 63 billion yuan, and Samsung Display's investment is also more than 20 billion yuan in RMB equivalent.

This huge investment guarantees the shortest time and the highest certainty. According to public information, BOE's 8.6th generation line project in Chengdu moved in equipment in May 2025 and plans to achieve mass production and shipment in the fourth quarter of 2026. Samsung Display's production line in Asan plans to start trial operation at the end of 2025 and achieve full mass production in the second quarter of 2026, targeting Apple's next-generation high-end IT products.

Regarding the logic behind the company's relevant investment, Chen Yanshun, the chairman of BOE, gave a comprehensive explanation during the semi-annual performance briefing on September 11, 2025. When asked about his views on different OLED technical routes in the industry, Chen Yanshun first clarified BOE's choice. Whether it is the mature 6th generation line or the 8.6th generation line under construction, BOE uses the well-verified LTPS (low-temperature poly-silicon, a mature high-performance backplane technology that can support higher resolution) and LTPO (a backplane technology that integrates oxide devices on the basis of LTPS, with the core advantage of being able to dynamically adjust the refresh rate and thus reduce power consumption) processes in its backplane technology (the underlying circuit board technology for driving pixel switches).

Subsequently, Chen Yanshun also mentioned new technical routes such as printing and lithography. Regarding the printing technology, he admitted that "it has developed in the past two years" and mentioned that BOE had also made investments and conducted verifications on a small-scale production line in the early years. However, he immediately pointed out the key concerns about applying it to large-scale production on the 8.6th generation line: "Can it be produced on a large size? What will be the yield rate and application effect after production? Because we haven't seen real market use yet."

Regarding the lithography technology, he believed that it faced the same problems: "The same goes for the lithography technology... We haven't used it, so we really don't know what the probability of success will be and how stable the yield rate will be."

For an investment as large as 63 billion yuan, this kind of uncertainty is obviously unacceptable. Chen Yanshun also clearly expressed his decision-making principle: "Personally, I think that since we are investing 63 billion yuan in the 8.6th generation line, we must first ensure success. On the basis of success, we will then strengthen our competitiveness through technological upgrading. If it's not successful, then there's no point in talking about anything else."

Ensuring success first and then talking about technological upgrading is the safest strategy. However, there are also problems. The core equipment for the "evaporation" process, the evaporation machine, can only be provided by a few companies in the world, such as Canon Tokki in Japan and Sunic System in South Korea. As early as last May, industry research firm WitDisplay pointed out that Samsung Display had booked Canon Tokki's evaporation machine production capacity before 2026, and BOE had booked all of Sunic System's production capacity before 2026. This means that other manufacturers may have to wait until after 2026 to get their equipment in place.

The second path is to take a "detour" in technology and seek "asymmetric" advantages.

The representative manufacturers in this regard are TCL CSOT and Visionox. Their common point is that they both avoid the mainstream "evaporation" process and choose different technical routes to break through.

TCL CSOT's choice is "printed OLED." The core of this route is to precisely spray light-emitting materials onto the glass substrate in a way similar to "inkjet printing." The biggest difference is that it bypasses the dependence on the evaporation machine.

Zhao Jun, the CEO of TCL CSOT, told reporters that the printing technology is expected to solve the three long-standing problems of mid-sized OLEDs: "high cost, low yield rate, and limited form." He provided a figure, stating that the material utilization rate of printed OLED can reach 90%, while that of the evaporation process is only about 30%.

He further explained the advantages of the printing technology at high resolutions: Since the light-emitting materials are directly printed on the pixels through the printing method, the RGB pixels can be arranged very regularly, resulting in a "clear, sharp, and very delicate" display quality.

TCL CSOT's investment of 29.5 billion yuan is less than half of BOE's. The planned monthly production capacity is about 22,500 glass substrates. In contrast, BOE's investment of 63 billion yuan is planned to achieve a monthly production capacity of 32,000 glass substrates.

TCL Technology's semi-annual report for 2025 shows that the company achieved operating revenue of 85.56 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 6.65%, and its net profit attributable to shareholders was 1.883 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 89.26%. Its core subsidiary, TCL CSOT, achieved operating revenue of 50.43 billion yuan in the same period, a year-on-year increase of 14.4%, and a net profit of 4.32 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74.0%.

Zhao Jun told reporters that "any emerging technology will face certain risks in the future. It's obviously unrealistic to say there are no risks." However, he also said that within the team and with leading customers, there have been extensive and in-depth discussions and verifications about the printed OLED route. He believes that the printing technology can fundamentally