OLED smartphones could be in short supply in 2022

A good many smartphones these days are using OLED displays. It’s a good thing as OLED screens look richer and more saturated compared to LCDs. They offer up deeper blacks and are also potentially better at saving energy because when displaying black, all they need to do is shut off those individual pixels.

That being said, it seems that there is a chance that come 2022, the world could face an OLED smartphone shortage. This is according to a report from DigiTimes who claims that there are production issues with the OLED display driver integrated circuits (DDI).

Prior to this, manufacturers were faced with another issue in the form of shortage of the power management integrated circuits due to the global chip shortage, but for the most part most smartphone makers did not have issue with supply of their products.

This time round though, the report claims that the OLED supply chain will have enough components to make around 650 million DDI units for 2022, but this falls short of the expected 710 million OLED smartphones that are expected to be sold in 2022.

This means that we could see a shortage of 60 million units, which is quite a lot, and could potentially affect the supply of smartphones. Whether or not manufacturers will be able to catch up in time remains to be seen, but if you’re planning to buy a new phone next year, don’t be surprised if available stock is less than usual.

Source: SamMobile