Nation plays bigger role in new display industry
An employee answers questions on a notebook with a curved screen during a high-tech expo in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in November. HUA XIAOFENG/FOR CHINA DAILY
China has become an important engine driving the development of global semiconductor display technologies, which have tremendous application potential in a wide range of fields such as vehicle-mounted displays, wearable devices, culture and education and healthcare, industry experts said.
According to a report released by market research firm CCID Consulting, China’s display industry revenue will exceed 580 billion yuan ($83.2 billion) in 2021, up 40.5 percent year-on-year, accounting for 36.9 percent of the global total. constitute display market.
The country’s annual production capacity of display panels reached 200 million square meters this year, ranking first in the world, which greatly promoted the application in smartphones, televisions, laptops, tablets and other display devices.
In addition, China’s new display industry has experienced rapid growth, with the compound annual growth rate reaching 25.8 percent from 2012 to 2021.
The new display industry mainly includes organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays and micro/mini light-emitting diode (micro/mini-LED) displays. Compared with traditional liquid crystal displays, the new display technology has great improvements in terms of image contrast, brightness and color spectrum, thus further accelerating the upgrade of the display industry, experts said.
Wang Jiangping, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, emphasized the importance of using new display technologies to boost economic growth and support enterprises to expand the application in vehicle-mounted devices, smart homes, virtual reality and other emerging sectors.
Wang made the remarks at the 2022 World Display Industry Conference, held in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, from November 30 to December 1.
More efforts are needed to continuously improve the resilience of the industrial and supply chains, make breakthroughs in core technologies of the new display industry and consolidate the enterprises’ prominent role in driving technological innovation, Wang added.
Liu Wenqiang, deputy head of CCID Consulting, said the new display industry, which serves as the terminal in the information age and a key field of the digital economy, is a basic, forward-looking and strategic industry.
“As the world’s largest panel manufacturing base, and research, development and application area, China has become an important engine that strengthens the development of the global display industry,” Liu said, adding that display technology empowers various fields such as consumer electronics, digital culture has. innovation and digital healthcare.
Flexible OLED is a relatively new technology and part of the recent innovations in the display industry. Focusing on the latest flexible OLED technology, Chinese display panel supplier Visionox Technology Inc has launched a range of medium-sized display products, including tablets, laptops and vehicle-mounted displays.
Visionox vice president and chief operating officer Xu Fengying said shipments of foldable phones equipped with flexible OLED display screens are expected to exceed 100 million units by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent.
China will overtake South Korea to become the biggest OLED maker by 2024 as more Chinese companies have invested heavily in new OLED production lines, said Zhou Hua, chief analyst at CINNO Research, a Chinese flat-panel display consulting firm.
Sigmaintell Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm, showed that global shipments of flexible OLED panels are expected to reach 405 million units in 2022, with Chinese display makers accounting for about 36 percent of the market share.
Statistics from the consultancy showed that global shipments of foldable smartphones rose 171.9 percent on an annual basis to around 7.21 million units in 2021, and the figure is expected to reach 14.4 million units this year, a increase of 99.6 percent year-on-year.
Li Yaqin, general manager of Sigmaintell, said the demand for flexible OLED panels used in foldable smartphones will continue to rise on the back of 5G commercial applications and panel manufacturers need to further improve their yield rate capability and reduce production costs.
“The penetration rate of OLED displays in the mobile market is expected to reach 50 percent by 2024,” Li said, adding that around 60 to 70 percent of sales revenue will be contributed by OLED technology by then.
