Nation plays bigger role in new display industry

China has become an important engine driving the development of global semiconductor display technologies, which have immense application potential in a wide range of fields such as vehicle-mounted displays, wearable gadgets, culture and education, and healthcare, industry experts said.

According to a report released by market research firm CCID Consulting, the revenue of China's display industry exceeded 580 billion yuan ($83.2 billion) in 2021, up 40.5 percent year-on-year, accounting for 36.9 percent of the global display market.

The country's annual production capacity of display panels has reached 200 million square meters this year, ranking first globally, which has greatly promoted the application in smartphones, televisions, laptops, tablets and other display devices.

In addition, China's new display industry has witnessed 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 diodes (OLED) displays and micro/mini light-emitting diodes (micro/mini LED) displays. Compared with traditional liquid crystal displays, the new display technologies have 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 significance of leveraging new display technologies to bolster economic growth and supporting 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 Conference on Display Industry, which was held from Nov 30 to Dec 1 in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.

More efforts are needed to continuously enhance 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 propelling 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 bolstering the development of the global display industry," Liu said, adding that display technologies have empowered several fields like consumer electronics, digital cultural innovation and digital healthcare.

Flexible OLED is a relatively new technology and part of the recent innovations in the display industry. Chinese display panel supplier Visionox Technology Inc is focusing on cutting-edge flexible OLED technology and has launched a series of medium-sized display products including tablets, laptops and vehicle-mounted screens.

Xu Fengying, vice-president and chief operating officer of Visionox, said the shipment of foldable phones equipped with flexible OLED display screens is expected to surpass more than 100 million units by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent.

China will overtake South Korea to become the biggest OLED manufacturer 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 consultancy.

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 surged 171.9 percent on a yearly basis to about 7.21 million units in 2021, and the figure is foreseen to reach 14.4 million units this year, an increase of 99.6 percent year-on-year.

Li Yaqin, general manager of Sigmaintell, said demand for flexible OLED panels used in foldable smartphones will continue to rise on the back of 5G commercial applications and panel makers should further improve their yield rate capacities 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 about 60 to 70 percent of sales revenue will be contributed by OLED technologies by then.