(Yicai) Oct. 12 -- The runaway success of Huawei Technologies’ new Mate 60 smartphones will likely enlarge the market share of flexible organic light-emitting diode displays, benefiting makers such as BOE Technology Group and Visionox, according to industry insiders.

Released last month, the Mate 60 series will drive flexible OLED screen shipments and swell the profits of their Chinese producers, said Zhou Hua, chief display analyst at Cinno Research.

Huawei’s comeback, after a difficult few years when it was placed on a US blacklist hampering its use of US tech, will increase demand for flexible OLED displays and support prices, Chen Jun, deputy general manager and chief analyst at market research firm Sigmaintell, told Yicai.

Flexible OLED displays offer a number of benefits, including being thinner, lighter and less power hungry than normal screens, making them a popular choice for use in smartphones, televisions, and wearable devices.

The Mate 60 is in short supply, according to distributors in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province and Dongguan in southern Guangdong province.

Shenzhen-based Huawei is expected to sell between 17 million and 18 million Mate 60 phones next year, and its demand for flexible OLED handset displays is expected to skyrocket up to 45 million to 50 million pieces in 2024, Chen said.

Huawei’s 13.2-inch MatePad Pro tablet also uses flexible OLED displays supplied by BOE and Visionox. Neither company had any comment to make regarding supplying Shenzhen-based Huawei when contacted by Yicai.

The penetration rate of OLED displays in the  mobile phone market may exceed 50 percent this year, industry players said. Beijing-based Visionox plans to focus on OLED displays for high-end models and increase tie-ups with major customers on everything from wearable devices and smartphones to medium-sized laptops.

BOE’s flexible OLED display shipments surged nearly 80 percent to 50 million pieces in the first half from a year earlier. This helped greatly reduce the Beijing-based firm’s losses in this field, despite the pressure from depreciation and falling prices.

Editor: Kim Taylor