Global OLED monitor shipments hit 2.735 million units in 2025, a 92% year-on-year increase. This is not a small tweak to an niche market. It is a wholesale shift in what gamers and professionals are actually buying when they go to pick a screen.
Not long ago, OLED monitors seemed like the technology equivalent of a luxury car most people would never own. The cost was brutal. The burn-in risk was treated as a genuine threat. The whole category felt fragile. Something has changed.
What Made the Difference
Brand marketing campaigns and the popularity of 27-inch, 1440p monitors with 240Hz refresh rates drove much of the surge, according to market analysis. But there is more beneath the surface. Multiple publicly available tests proving the durability of modern OLEDs, combined with new models offering 500Hz refresh rates and improved brightness, created the recipe for the market boom.
OLED monitors have established themselves with outstanding image quality, wide colour range, high contrast, and rapid response times, with many models supporting refresh rates of 240Hz or more. What matters to gamers is that faster response times, deeper blacks, and better viewing angles create a genuinely superior experience compared to traditional LCD monitors. The technology delivers something real, not just marketing polish.
Price movement helped too. 27-inch 240Hz QHD models gained considerable popularity due to their excellent price-to-performance ratio, and the launch of new 280Hz models further energised the market. When the same feature set costs less, more people buy it.
The Market Reshuffles
Asus surpassed Samsung in the third quarter and maintained its lead by year-end with a 21.6% market share. The company's ROG gaming, ProArt professional, and ZenScreen mobile product lines demonstrated strong competitiveness across multiple segments. Samsung took second place with a 19.3% market share, driven by strong shipments of new 27-inch 180Hz models and aggressive year-end promotions.
MSI ranked third globally with 13.1% market share after expanding its presence through rapid product iteration and a broad lineup across multiple price tiers. LG Electronics placed fourth with 12.6% market share and holds a near-monopolistic position in the 39-inch and 45-inch OLED monitor segments. Dell ranked fifth with 9.9% market share, primarily through its Alienware gaming brand.
This is a market where competition is genuinely heating up. Samsung continues to exert strong competitive pressure by advancing simultaneously in both mainstream and high-end segments. That's good news for consumers. More players competing for share means faster innovation and steeper price declines.
What Comes Next
In 2026, total shipments are expected to grow by 51% year-on-year as brands continue rolling out new products and marketing strategies gain further traction. This acceleration matters because it suggests OLED is no longer a specialist product gathering early adopters. It is becoming ordinary.
Behind the scenes, Samsung Display is focusing on expanding OLED monitor shipments where unit prices and profitability are relatively higher than for TV panels. Monitor panels achieve utilisation rates exceeding 90% compared to 60-70% for TV panels, and offer relatively higher profitability on a price-per-area basis. In other words, manufacturers are redirecting capital toward screens because the economics favour it.
Chinese panel makers are also accelerating their entry into the IT OLED market, with BOE gradually increasing shipments of IT OLED panels and TCL CSOT planning shipments based on in-house inkjet-printed OLED technology. The entry of Chinese players is likely to enhance both price competitiveness and product diversity. More supply eventually means lower prices. That's how technology moves from luxury to standard.
The real story here is not that OLED monitors suddenly became magic. It is that they became good enough and cheap enough that millions of people stopped seeing them as an indulgence and started seeing them as the obvious choice. The technology was ready years ago. The market just needed to catch up.