2026 iPad Air OLED Panels to Be Supplied by Samsung Display

According to a recent report from The Elec, Apple will choose Samsung Display as the main supplier of OLED panels for the new iPad Air. The company made this decision because Samsung is capable of producing more products than LG Display. The M4 iPad Pro uses a dual OLED architecture for improved brightness and efficiency thanks to Samsung’s current OLED panels. The iPad Air and the compact class iPad mini won’t be spared by Apple from incorporating OLED panels, starting in 2026 as per a recent report.

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Samsung Display’s A3 line, which is responsible for OLED panels designed for Apple iPhones and iPad Pros has a monthly capacity of 135,000 units. By comparison, LG Display’s E6 lines which are used for iPhone and iPad OLED panels have much lower capacities with the E6-1~3 lines producing 45,000 per month while just 15,000 per month come out of the E6-4 line.

The transition of the iPad mini and Air for OLED screens has been on many radars. Omdia believes that the iPad Air in 2026 will join the OLED camp and then for the first time even an iPad mini from Apple itself. The Korea ET News and ZDNet Korea reports did say both OLED updates might happen together, but they also left room for a delayed 13-inch iPad Air with an OLED panel until late 2026 or possibly even in early to mid-2027.

Meanwhile, the OLED iPad Air should still use an 11-inch panel and if anything, we might see a slight bump in size for the rumored new mini from its current 8.3 inches up to slightly larger 8.7 inches.

Unlike the latest iPad Pro models, which use dual-stack LTPO (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) OLED panels, the iPad mini, and iPad Air will likely feature single-stack LTPS (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon) panels. By doing so, Apple can reduce costs of production at the expense of not having ProMotion Technology along with being less bright.

Thanks to being excellent at manufacturing tandem OLED panels, LG Display probably will not disrupt the potential iPad Air OLED transition. Sources suggest that Apple’s need for high-volume OLED production will lead it to favor Samsung Display, which can reliably deliver large quantities of single-stack OLED panels.

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