Inside a five-story factory the size of 14 soccer fields, known simply as B7, the race is on to dominate the lucrative market for next-generation smartphone display panels.
Motivational posters and signs adorn the clean white hallways and toilets of the factory in Chengdu, capital of China's Sichuan Province: "Let's put all our strength together to bring success to our clients"; "Change & Challenge"; "Study, improve and take responsibility"; and "Unity, speed and quality."
The owner of this supermodern factory is Chinese tech giant BOE Technology Group. Already one of the world's largest makers of liquid-crystal display panels, BOE this month will begin mass production of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) display panels and aims to rival Samsung Electronics as a key supplier to Apple.
BOE, a state-owned company managed by the Beijing city government, has been working on OLEDs for more than 15 years. It acquired the critical technology in 2001 when it purchased the OLED-display operations of South Korea's Hydis Technologies, which at the time was owned by Hynix Semiconductor (now SK Hynix), and later developed its own technology.
In 2011, the company built its -- and China's -- first OLED-display plant in Ordos City, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In 2014, BOE began mass-producing OLED glass panels on a production line in the city shared with LCD panels. The following year it focused on OLED panels for its new plant in Chengdu, and two years later it established the B7 factory.
"We're expediting our final push for our first shipment in late October," a BOE executive at the B7 factory said. While China celebrates its National Day holiday week in early October, engineers at the factory will continue working to ship panels to smartphone makers in China.
The OLED panel market is expanding rapidly. U.K. research company IHS Markit projects that the value of global OLED panel shipments will hit $21.6 billion this year, up 53% from 2016. It says the market for OLED panels for smartphones will roughly triple over the next five years, while the market for LCD panels will fall 14%.