TCL

TCL CSOT announced that it is set to triple its 5.5-Gen inkjet-printed OLED line in Wuhan. The company signed an agreement with the local government in Wuhan that will support the project, which will require an investment of 1.5 billion Yuan ($211 million USD). TCL CSOT expects that the new capacity will be ready by 2028.

TCL CSOT currently produces commercial displays at its 5.5-Gen line, but once its 8.6-Gen inkjet printing line will be ready (which will also be at around 2028), it will utilize the 5.5-Gen line mostly for R&D, pilot production and verification of products on a pilot scale. But with that expanded capacity, it will likely be also used for some commercial production. The 5.5-Gen line is based on equipment that TCL CSOT acquired from JOLED, after it was bankrupt in 2023.

A few days ago, TCL CSOT unveiled its latest OLED (FMM and inkjet printing) prototypes, at its DTC 2025 event. TCL is betting on inkjet printing to provide a cost-effective way to produce high quality OLED displays, for a wide range of applications, from smartphones to monitors, laptops and TVs. 

Dr. Weiran Cao, General Manager of IJP OLED Center of TCL CSOT

In this article, we interview two of TCL CSOT's executives: Ming-Jong Jou, Chief of the Technology Planning Center at TCL CSOT, and Dr. Weiran Cao, General Manager of IJP OLED Center of TCL CSOT. Dr. Cao and Jou both discuss TCL CSOT's OLED technology, current status, future plans, microLED displays - and the company multiple display technology strategy.

Hello Dr. Cao, thank you for this interview. Let's start with AMOLED displays. TCL CSOT is introducing new technologies, such as Partitioned Frequency Division, High PPI, Real RGB Stripe. I wonder how TCL CSOT sees the future of AMOLED technology? Will the main technology drive continue to be towards increased efficiency, or will performance metrics such as resolution or color gamut be important too?

TCL CSOT is advancing two types of OLED technologies: traditional FMM OLED and Inkjet-printed OLED (IJP OLED), and TCL CSOT is widely recognized as the global leader of IJP OLED technology.

TCL CSOT is hosting its own Global Display Tech-Ecosystem Conference (DTC 2025) in Suzhou, China, showcasing its latest next-generation display technologies, panels and prototypes.

First, TCL is showing the world's highest PPI Real-RGB G-OLED display, at 1,512 PPI. This is a 2.56" panel with a resolution of 2560x2740, offering a 120Hz refresh rate and a wide color gamut. TCL targets XR (VR) devices for this display. A couple of months ago Xiaomi announced its 17 Pro Max flagship smartphone, that featured TCL's 6.9" 1200x2608 120Hz 3,500 nits LTPO Real-RGB AMOLED (and also a secondary 2.9" 596x976 LTPO AMOLED back screen). TCL says that its Real-RGB architecture not only increases actual resolution and increases production yields, but it also reduces the power consumption by 26%.

QD-OLED is an OLED display architecture, that is based on single-color OLED emitters and color conversion using quantum-dots. This relatively complex architecture was invented years ago as a way to solve the challenges of large-area OLED RGB device deposition.  

In recent years, we have seen successful full-scale commercialization of QD-OLED panels (by Samsung Display), but now in 2025, is there a place for this interestingly but complex device architecture? In this article we discuss the following topics:

Xiaomi just announces its latest flagship smartphone, the 17 Pro Max, with a 6.9" 1200x2608 120Hz 3,500 nits LTPO AMOLED (and also a secondary 2.9" 596x976 LTPO AMOLED back screen).

These displays are produced by TCL CSOT, that unveiled that the 6.9" AMOLED uses TCL's Real RGB subpixel design for the first time. This architecture uses full 3 subpixels, red, green and blue, for each pixel. TCL says that it not only increases actual resolution and increases production yields, but it also reduces the power consumption by 26%.

TCL CSOT announced that it is starting to construct a 8.6-Gen inkjet printing OLED production line in Guangzhou, China. The company has received support from the local government for this project, which is estimated to have a total investment of 29.5 billion Yuan ($4.15 billion USD). 

TCL says that the planned T8 fab will have a monthly capacity of 22,500 glass substrates (8.6-Gen, or 2290x2620 mm). TCL is mainly targeting IT devices - tablets, laptops and monitors. TCL is joining Samsung, BOE and Visionox that have already announced (and started construction) 8.6-Gen IT AMOLED lines, but TCL's line is unique in its printing production process. TCL says it will begin construction in November 2025, which means that realistically real mass production will likely begin only in 2028 or later.

TCL Technology announced its financial results for the first half of 2025, with revenues of 85.5 billion yuan ($12 billion USD), an increase of 6.65% from 2024, and a net profit of 1.9 billion yuan ($265 million USD), almost 90% higher than last year.

The company's display unit, TCL CSoT, announced revenues of 50 million Yuan ($7 billion USD), up 14.4% from 2024, and a net profit of 4.3 billion yuan ($600 million USD), 74% higher than in 2024.

Counterpoint (DSCC) released an interesting post, detailing the display industry's capex spending in the near future. Unsurprisingly, OLED technology will contribute the majority share of these investments.

After a long time during which all OLED production was performed using FMM (evaporation and mask) technology, finally we are seeing two competing technologies - photo patterned OLEDs (adopting by Visionox as ViP and JDI as eLEAP), and inkjet printing (adopted by TCL CSoT). According to counterpoint, the price different between FMM and Photo-Patterned, in terms of the investment in equipment, is not dramatic. In fact, the company estimates that it is 8% cheaper to build a photo-patterned production line. Counterpoint admits, though, that it may be a bit early to understand the complete costs involved with such a line.

Towards the end of 2024 TCL CSOT announced that it has started to mass produced inkjet printed OLED displays at its 5.5-Gen production line, with the first panels out of the production line to be 21.6” 4K monitor displays, aimed towards the medical market. We since then heard conflicting reports - that TCL decided to delay its plans, or that it has changed its focus to smartphone type displays.

No we hear that the company has managed to increase the performance of its inkjet printing process, and has managed to achieve a display density of 350 PPI - up from around 325PPI. The lifetime of the company's printed OLEDs is also increasing constantly. This new information gives more credibility to TCL's printed smartphone plan, which we will detail below.

Towards the end of 2024 TCL CSOT announced that it has started to mass produced inkjet printed OLED displays at its 5.5-Gen production line, with the first panels out of the production line to be 21.6” 4K monitor displays, aimed towards the medical market. 

According to a new report from China, TCL CSoT has delayed its production plans, and it now expects the first panels to be produced at its inkjet printing line to in Q3 2026. The company, that is already talking to potential customers, has decided to support 144Hz and (or 120Hz) refresh rates and seems to have also changed its target application, as TCL is now looking to offer this panel to monitors to be used by creative professional and 'general productivity' - or corporate use. Previously the company aimed to supply the panel to medical monitors.