OLED占领高端市场，引发厂商激烈竞争

你见过最新的数字显示屏吗？当然。你曾伸着脖子看着智能手机，浏览着车载娱乐系统，也曾对着大屏电视机打过哈欠。实际上，你甚至害怕有人看到你iPhone上的Screen Time应用给出的惊人的统计数据。（每天花在回应大家庭的社交媒体邮件的时间：超出平均水平两小时。）

没错，你对这些发光屏幕的热情仿佛一种原始的欲望，就像飞蛾一样。不过你是否真正看过近来的最新产品？它们……变得比以往更好了。线条更明晰，颜色更鲜艳，而墨水般的漆黑让你沉醉。它们看起来和你的那些老款设备的屏幕有些不同。那是因为一项被称作OLED的技术。

OLED指的是有机发光二极管（organic light-emitting diode），它与过去十年里占据主导地位的显示屏技术LED和LCD在简称的字母上可能有些相似，不过实质上却有根本性的不同。LG电子（LG Electronics）美国区的发言人约翰·泰勒表示：“OLED发出的是自己的光，因此在像素质量上具有明显优势。每个像素都可以单独控制，这意味着它能创造出完美的黑阶，这是优秀影像中最重要的元素。”

OLED的价格也高得多。它统治了手机[（三星（Samsung）售价720美元的Galaxy S9]、电视（LG售价2,000美元的C8）等高端市场。最重要的是，只有少数企业[包括三星、LG和索尼（Sony）]控制着它有限的产出。

市场研究公司IHS的显示屏技术研究主管杰瑞·康在首尔表示：“几乎每家公司都在努力投资与三星竞争，剩下那些公司则试图快速效仿。”

IHS认为，全球OLED市场的销售额将会从今年的约260亿美元增长到2022年的375亿美元，其主要驱动因素在于移动设备。谁是赢家则取决于设备：三星为全球排名前二的手机制造商[它本身和苹果（Apple）]提供OLED屏幕，而早期不采用OLED的决定无意间让公司把高端电视市场拱手让给了LG和索尼。根据IHS的数据，后两者的电视销售额都占据了全球总销售额的三分之一以上。（三星显示器公司的发言人表示：“我们坚定认为，可以利用我们的OLED显示屏继续开拓这个充满可能性的世界。”并补充称三星早在18年前就开始了这项技术的研发投资。）

随着OLED的价格继续攀升，曾经高档的创新成为主流，整个世界都为之激动，而冬天的假日购物季也恰好即将来临。LG的泰勒表示：“它仍然属于新兴技术，我们不会松开油门。”（财富中文网）

本文的另一个版本登载于《财富》杂志2018年11月1日刊，标题为“Black And Blue All Over”。

译者：严匡正

LOOK AT ANY DIGITAL DISPLAYS LATELY? Of course you have. You’ve craned your neck over a smartphone, glanced at a car’s entertainment system, and gaped at a big-screen TV. Deep down, you’re horrified that someone might see the telling totals calculated by the Screen Time app on your iPhone. (Time spent responding to political social media posts by your extended family: two hours above average.)

Sure, your attraction to glowing panels of light is a little animalistic, a bit moth-like. But have you actually looked at them lately? They’re just … better than they used to be. Lines are crisp, colors pop, and you get lost in their inky blackness. They look different from the displays on your old devices. That’s because of a technology called OLED.

OLED—which stands for organic light-emitting diode—may share a few letters with LED and LCD, the predominant display technologies of the past decade. But it’s fundamentally different. “OLED emits its own light, and that really offers distinct advantages when it comes to pixel quality,” says LG Electronics USA spokesman John Taylor. “Every pixel can be individually controlled, so that means it can create perfect black levels—the most important element to a great picture.”

OLED also commands a much higher price. It dominates the high-end market segments it’s in, from phones (Samsung’s $720 Galaxy S9) to televisions (LG’s $2,000 C8). Most important, only a handful of corporations—including Samsung, LG, and Sony—control its limited supply.

“Almost every company is investing to compete with Samsung,” says Jerry Kang, who leads display technology analysis at IHS, the market research firm, from Seoul. “The other companies are trying to rapidly follow.”

Kang’s firm believes the global OLED market will grow from about $26 billion in sales this year to $37.5 billion in 2022, driven largely by mobile devices. Who’s winning or losing depends on the device: Samsung supplies OLED displays to the world’s top two phonemakers (itself and Apple), yet an early decision against OLED inadvertently handed the premium-TV market to LG and Sony, each of which claimed more than a third of all sales last year, according to IHS. (“We firmly believe that we can continue to expand the world of possibilities with our OLED displays,” says a Samsung Display spokesman, adding that the company started investing in development of the technology 18 years ago.)

The war rages on as OLED prices continue to plummet and a once-premium innovation goes mainstream—just in time for the winter holiday shopping season. “It’s still relatively young technology,” says LG’s Taylor. “We’re not going to take our foot off the accelerator.”

A version of this article appears in the November 1, 2018 issue of Fortune with the headline “Black And Blue All Over.”