LG Display Co., a major display panel maker in South Korea, has continued to expand its presence in the global smartphone OLED panel market, industry data showed Thursday, as the company strives to improve its earnings.

LG Display had a 10.8 percent share in the global smartphone OLED panel market in the fourth quarter of 2019, up from 2.1 percent in the third quarter, according to data from industry researcher IHS Markit.

It marked the first time that LG Display's quarterly market share has topped 10 percent in the mobile OLED sector. For the whole of 2019, LG Display's market share was 4.8 percent, nearly double its market share in 2018.

Samsung Display Co. remained the dominant player in the mobile OLED market, although its fourth-quarter market share dropped more than 9 percentage points from three months earlier to 81.2 percent, according to the data.

Market watchers said LG Display's robust growth came after the company started to supply its plastic OLED products for Apple Inc.'s iPhone 11.

In the fourth quarter, LG Display said sales of mobile OLED products outnumbered those of display panels for TVs for the first time, after they accounted for 36 percent of its total sales.

"LG Display's small and midsized OLED panel business is likely to be in full operation after it secured customers like Apple and Huawei," Kim Dong-won, an analyst at KB Securities, said. "It raises the possibility that the company may swing to black in the second half of this year."

LG Display posted an operating loss of 1.35 trillion won

($1.1 billion) last year, while its annual sales fell 3.5 percent on-year to 23.47 trillion won. (Yonhap)