About
BOE — originally Beijing Oriental Electronics — was a struggling state-owned tube maker when it made one of the boldest bets in Chinese industrial history: in 2003, it acquired Hyundai's liquid crystal display business and began building the factories that would take on Samsung and LG in the world's most capital-intensive industry. The strategy was brutally simple — invest through downturns when rivals retreat, build the next-generation factory, and repeat — and it made BOE the world's largest display panel maker. The company now produces over a quarter of the world's LCD panels, from smartphone screens and laptop displays to 8K TVs and the flexible OLED panels used in foldable phones. Its factories in Beijing, Hefei, Chengdu, and elsewhere represent tens of billions of dollars of investment, and its display technology is inside products from virtually every major electronics brand. BOE is also expanding into IoT, smart healthcare, and semiconductor-related businesses. With about 90,000 employees and annual revenue near RMB 180 billion (US$25 billion), BOE's counter-cyclical strategy — spending billions on new fabs exactly when the industry is in downturn — has repeatedly crushed the profit cycles of its competitors. For the display industry, BOE is the reason China dominates LCD manufacturing today — the company that turned a state-supported gamble into global market leadership.
Also known as: BOE
