Construction crews are preparing to return to a site in Asan, South Korea, that has stood idle since 2021. Samsung Display, the display-making arm of Samsung Group, has approved the restart of its A7 plant in the second complex of the Asan campus, a new production line for foldable screens whose construction was shelved five years ago when the flexible-panel market grew more slowly than the company hoped.
The green light came on Aug. 7, when Samsung Display’s investment review committee approved resuming structural work on the plant, according to reports. Orders for equipment are expected this month, with construction starting next year and completion targeted for early 2028. The project is expected to cost trillions of won, a sum the company has not detailed.
The timing reflects a market that finally arrived. Samsung’s Galaxy Z8 series drew preorders of 1.44 million units in South Korea, up 38.5% from the previous Z7 generation and a record for the company’s smartphone preorders. Samsung Display is the exclusive supplier of foldable panels for the Galaxy Z line, and it is expected to be the exclusive supplier of panels for Apple’s first foldable iPhone, a device that, if it ships as planned, would hand Samsung Display the two largest foldable customers at once.
The market math supports the bet. Omdia, a research firm, projects the global foldable OLED market will grow from about $3 billion in 2025 to about $6.3 billion in 2030, an increase of 109.5%. Samsung Display has said it plans to invest 67 trillion won in the display industry through 2040, and the A7 restart is the first concrete signal that the spending plan is moving from a slide deck to a construction site.
The revival is not without risk. The A7 project was shelved in 2021, a period when OLED panel supply outran demand and phone makers slowed orders. Foldables remain a premium niche within a smartphone market that has largely stopped growing, and the category’s success depends on prices falling enough to reach buyers beyond the early adopters. Samsung Display is betting that Apple’s entry will do for foldables what the iPhone did for touchscreens, by pulling the category into the mainstream.
Competition is part of the calculation. Chinese panel makers have expanded into foldable OLED and chipped away at Samsung’s share of the broader OLED market, which once seemed unassailable. Analysts said the restart is partly defensive: Samsung Display needs the capacity and the technology edge to keep both Samsung Electronics and Apple as anchor customers as rivals close the gap. The company’s answer has been to keep spending on the newest generations of production technology, betting that scale and yield advantages outweigh lower-cost competition.
Foldable panels are also the most expensive component inside a foldable phone, which makes the supply relationship unusually strategic. A handset maker that controls its own panel supply can time product launches to capacity, while rivals wait in line at other factories. Samsung’s position as both the leading foldable seller and the leading foldable panel supplier gives the company a rare combination of demand visibility and supply control.
The display industry has been through a brutal consolidation. Years of price wars and oversupply forced weaker players out or into mergers, and the survivors learned to time new capacity to product cycles rather than to their own optimism. The A7 restart fits that pattern: after five years of waiting, Samsung Display is adding capacity only for the one segment that is still growing, and only after preorder numbers and a major new customer gave it reason to believe the demand is real.
For the foldable market, the restart is a signal that the largest panel maker believes the category’s inflection point has arrived. If Apple’s foldable iPhone sells the way analysts expect, the industry will need every line it can build. If it stumbles, Samsung Display will again be carrying idle capacity. The company has made its choice, and the construction schedule at Asan will show whether the bet pays off.
The economics of display manufacturing explain the caution that preceded this decision. Panel plants cost billions to build, take years to reach volume production, and face brutal price competition once they come online, and the industry’s history is littered with capacity added just before demand softened. Samsung Display’s five-year pause on A7 reflected that history, and the restart reflects a rare convergence: a record preorder cycle at Samsung Electronics, a first foldable from Apple in the pipeline, and a market forecast that the category will more than double in five years.
The technology roadmap is part of the bet. Foldable panels have improved with each generation, from thicker plastic-based screens to designs that fold flatter with less visible creasing, and each generation of production equipment pushes yields and durability further. Analysts said the new line will likely incorporate the latest generation of OLED production technology, giving Samsung Display a cost and quality advantage on the panels that matter most to its two anchor customers.
The risks are symmetrical with the opportunity. Apple’s foldable could fail to launch on schedule, or sell below expectations, and the Galaxy Z series could revert to the niche it occupied before the Z8’s record run. Samsung Display has been through both cycles before, and it is betting that this time the volume is real. The construction schedule at Asan will answer within two years.
