Samsung marketing vp Lee Woo-jong has told the Reuters Global Technology Summit that he expects the smartphone market to continue expanding, and with it, the demand for AMOLED screens to grow rapidly. Good news for Samsung who, last week, said it was going to invest £1.5 billion into the world's largest AMOLED production line by 2012.

"Demand for high-end displays is very strong and we may continue to fail to meet all customer requirements, even after expanding capacity by seven-fold, until next year", said Lee.

He stated that the growth in smartphones will mean that, this year, shipments will rise from 175 million in 2009, to 260 million. He said that this would lead to a massive expansion of the AMOLED market and, by 2015, there would be 600 million being produced. 

Samsung faces strong competition in the AMOLED market from the likes of LG, who is also investing heavily into its production line. Lee said that Samsung welcomed the competition though as "the industry needs more major players to grow this market, which is likely to expand application segments to other areas such as tablet PCs and TVs eventually".

Lee also said Samsung's AMOLED business was now above break-even as a result of strong sales that have began to offset huge investment in the past.

Earlier this week we told you how Samsung also has big plans for large sized OLED screens and is planning on leading the way in the TV OLED production as well.