At present, the technical transformation of display panels is at the crossroads of industry development, and technologies such as LCD, OLED, miniLED and other technologies are fiercely competing and competing in their respective tracks and product ranges. Industry insiders told Aijiwei, "In the next 10 years, the display industry will have a situation where multiple technologies coexist. ”
To this end, the author also summarizes and analyzes the progress of LCD, OLED, Mini LED and other display technologies and market trends.
Large size TV panel
As we all know, the epidemic has led to the development of the "home economy", and the demand for consumer electronics such as television and laptops has increased significantly. The strong demand in the terminal market has also driven the price of upstream LCD panels to continue to rise. Since June 2020, lcd TV panel prices have continued to rise until June 2021, and the industry has also ushered in the longest and largest upward cycle.
However, with the weakening of terminal demand, the stabilization of upstream raw material supply and the release of production capacity of TCL Huaxing 10.5 generation line factory (T7), Huike 8.6 generation line factory (H5) and other manufacturers, the industry supply and demand have reversed, and the "price increase tide" of LCD TV panels that has lasted for about a year has ended. Take the small size of the 32-inch product, for example, the average price of each piece in July was as high as $87, and has now fallen to $4.1 billion per piece, a 53% drop. The average price per piece of large-sized 65-inch products fell from $288 in July to $179, a decline of 37.85%.
Industry insiders pointed out that domestic panel manufacturers or continue to expand their production capacity. For example, Huike will expand the capacity of its H2, H4 and H5 plants. After the BOE B17 achieves 180,000 pieces / month, it may further expand its production capacity, with an additional production capacity of 120,000 pieces / month.
Omdia pointed out that Chinese mainland new capacity, the post-epidemic era panel demand reduction, the shortage of non-panel parts and logistics problems and other factors may lead to a continuous decline in the price of Q1 LCD TV panels next year, starting from Q2, panel demand will increase, TV panel prices will gradually rebound; while the shortage of components will be a factor that will continue to affect panel prices in 2022. As TV demand will change dramatically in the post-pandemic era, the price of TV panels will likely cycle twice a year as supply and demand change.
Dong Min, deputy secretary-general of the China Electronic Video Industry Association, also told Aijiwei, "In July 2021, the inventory of terminal manufacturers was very high, and some head brands almost reached a record high. Due to the prediction that the LCD TV panel will fall in price, the head brand has also carried out inventory cleanup. However, the National Day and double 11 stockpiling, resulting in the current library is still at a high level. However, with the recovery of end market demand, panel prices may stabilize and rise after the second quarter of this year. ”
From the supply side, the active expansion of existing production line capacity by some panel factories will drive a significant year-on-year increase in the effective supply capacity of global LCD TV panels in 2022. According to the forecast data of Qunzhi Consulting, the global LCD TV panel production capacity area will increase by 8.1% year-on-year in 2022.
From the perspective of comprehensive supply and demand, according to the calculation of the supply and demand model of Qunzhi Consulting, the supply and demand ratio of the global LCD TV panel area benchmark in the first quarter of 2022 is 6.2%, and the supply and demand situation has eased compared with the second half of 2021, but the supply is still loose, and the price of LCD TV panels has maintained a downward trend, and the decline has gradually narrowed. In the second quarter, as the price of the panel gradually approached the cash cost, at the same time, the domestic stock demand is expected to recover, whether the price of LCD TV panels can be stabilized and the price of some size panels may usher in an inflection point.
Similar to the price trend of LCD TV panels, the epidemic has pushed up the economic demand for home, and the price of OLED panels for large-size TVs rose for the first time in 3 years since Q2 2021, but Q3 turned down again (down about 3%), and the Q4 decline expanded to 5%, and the price has fallen by 20% in the past two years.
The price of large-size OLED panels continues to fall, which is greatly related to the increase in production of Samsung display and LGD. Since 2020, LGD has continuously increased the output of OLED panels for 8.5-generation TV in Guangzhou, and its annual shipments of OLED panels have increased by 70% to 7.5 million units compared with 2020 (4.5 million units). At the same time, the official mass production of Samsung Display QD Display marks the transformation of OLED TV panel supply from single supply to diversified supply pattern, providing a stronger guarantee for OLED TV panel supply. Qunzhi Consulting expects that OLED panel shipments will exceed 11 million in 2022, and the penetration rate will reach 4.3%.
In terms of the popular Mini LED TV, with the entry of large manufacturers, the industry has high expectations for the Mini LED TV market in 2021. However, due to the high cost of the Mini LED backlight module, the cost of the Mini LED TV has increased, resulting in the higher price of the Mini LED TV being snubbed by the market, and the sales volume is not as good as expected.
Jie Meijuan, general manager of the consumer electronics division of Aowei Cloud Network, revealed to Jiwei Network that Aowei Cloud Network has reduced the size of the Mini LED TV market from 250,000 units to about 150,000 units in 2021. GfK is even less optimistic about the Mini LED TV market, and even expects that the retail sales volume of China's Mini LED TV in 2021 will only be 70,000 units.
However, with the decline in the cost of Mini LED, the competitiveness of the product is also expected to strengthen. Dong Min said that the current upstream and downstream manufacturers in the industry to the Mini LED field to invest a lot of resources, this year and next year Mini LED will become the mainstream of new technology for TV products, Mini LED TV fierce market competition will continue for about three years.
Overall, under the wave of global digitalization and IoT, changes in user usage scenarios and application requirements have brought opportunities for product innovation and brought new incremental space to the market, especially the demand of OLED, Mini LED, oversized size, high refresh rate TV and other market segments have good growth potential. Qunzhi Consulting believes that strengthening innovation, mining the needs of subdivided scenes, and meeting the personalized needs of different consumers for TVs is the only way for brands to enhance product differentiation competition and create more product value.
Small and medium size areas
At present, there are three main semiconductor substrate materials used in TFT-LCD, namely a-Si, LTPS and IGZO. Among them, a-Si technology due to maturity and stability, low cost, can achieve higher yield in all sizes of products, the early TFT-LCD panel to a-Si substrate materials, but can not reach the latest market demand, mainly used in low-end smart phones, vehicles and other special display market and cheap EPD (electronic paper) panels.
In the past two years, due to the impact of the epidemic, the demand for educational notebooks, tablets, etc. has grown rapidly, resulting in a very tight supply of a-Si LCD production capacity, and the price of products has continued to rise. However, with the decline in market demand and the opening of new production capacity (new production capacity includes Xinli Renshou 5-generation line, Henan Huarui 5-generation line, Mianyang Huike 8.6-generation line, etc.), the industry supply and demand reversed, and production capacity also turned from shortage to excess, a-Si panel prices began to decline continuously from July 2021, and the downward trend is expected to continue.
LTPS is suitable for small and medium-sized high-end LCD panels with high resolution and electronic movement rate requirements. Due to the squeeze of OLED technology, it has gradually withdrawn from the high-end mobile phone market and gradually shifted to the tablet, laptop, car and other markets.
With the change of technology and the change of market demand, domestic panel manufacturers have also accelerated the strategic layout of medium size, for example, TCL Huaxing has shifted part of the production capacity of the T3 production line to medium-size product development, and plans to expand a monthly processing of 45,000 glass panels of the 6th generation LTPS LCD display panel production line (t5) and oxide semiconductor display production line (t9), the production of vehicles, laptops, flat panels, VR display panels and other small and medium-sized high-end display products.
Metal oxides (IGZO) have a higher electron mobility, the higher the electron mobility, the greater the amount of device information transmission, can use a narrower channel to transmit information, achieve higher resolution, and has the advantages of high brightness, low power consumption, narrow bezel. At present, the domestic layout of this technology enterprises include BOE, TCL Huaxing, Huaying Technology, Longteng Optoelectronics (technology transformation), Huike and so on.
In terms of OLED technology, with a number of technical advantages such as narrow bezels, foldable, low power consumption, etc., OLED panels have been widely used in flagship mobile phones of global first-line brands, and their market penetration rate has shown a rapid growth trend. At the same time, OLED panels are also gradually penetrating into the market such as laptops and tablets. For example, laptop manufacturers such as Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Xiaomi have recently launched oled laptops.
In terms of specific markets, in the field of smart phones, with the decline in terminal market demand, mobile phone panel shipments are also showing a downward trend. According to the data, in the third quarter of 2021, global smartphone panel shipments were about 480 million pieces (glass small piece caliber), down about 6.5% year-on-year.
In the overall downward trend, the shipment of mobile phone panels in different technology categories shows differentiation, including LTPS and a-Si, the TFT LCD market has become saturated, and with the release of new models of 5G smartphones, the demand for OLED has increased, and the shipment of OLED panels in the third quarter was about 170 million pieces, an increase of about 39.2% year-on-year, and the shipment penetration rate was about 35.1%, up about 11.5 percentage points year-on-year.
In order to cope with the strong market demand for OLED, Chinese display panel manufacturers are accelerating the large-scale production technology of flexible OLED to catch up with manufacturers such as Samsung and LGD. According to the survey data of Qunzhi Consulting, 640 million olED smartphone panels will be shipped worldwide in 2021. Regionally, Chinese mainland manufacturers' OLED panel shipments were about 140 million pieces, an increase of about 60.1% year-on-year, with a growth rate of twice the global average. Among them, BOE ranks second in the world and first in China with 60 million pieces of shipments.
Omdia expects that the smartphone display panel market will be more competitive this year, and as LTPS LCD loses market share in smartphone display panels, the sixth-generation line LTPS LCD factory will be assigned to produce tablet computers and car panels, which are high-resolution, large-size display panel markets.
In the field of laptops, in the post-epidemic era, people's demand for high-end comfortable and superior notebooks has expanded, the demand for thin and light performance is strong, and the iterative boom of new products in the market is surging. At the same time, the mining market continues to be hot, bringing a certain amount of game-based consumer demand. According to the statistics of Qunzhi Consulting, the scale of shipments of the whole machine in China's laptop market in the third quarter increased positively, with an increase of about 16.8% year-on-year; the market heat in the fourth quarter was stable, and the annual shipment scale in 2021 is expected to reach more than 33.8 million units, a substantial increase of about 18.1% year-on-year.
In terms of screen technology, the OLED market has gradually expanded and the penetration rate has increased. OLED products shipped about 160,000 units in the third quarter, and the penetration rate in the Chinese market reached 1.7%. This year's OLED products are widely available, the overall price of products is down, the market is further expanding downwards, and the brand side Lenovo Asus and so on have a lot of OLED products. Panel manufacturers are also actively producing, OLED folding screen will be concentrated in mass production next year, it is expected that OLED products will reach a new height this year.
In terms of Mini LED technology, in 2021, Apple's two new laptops equipped with Mini LED screens came out, which detonated the market heat, but the cost of Mini LED is relatively high, plus the supply cycle is unstable, and the subsequent growth of Mini LED products led by Apple will slow down, and the main theme of market development is still on OLED.
Qunzhi Consulting said that under the acceleration of new product iteration this year, high-end models will continue to maintain high demand, but the growth rate will slow down. Mining demand will slow in the second half of the year, and the strong thrust generated by Chinese games will weaken in the second half of the year. It is estimated that the shipment scale of China's laptop market this year will be about 34.6 million units, and the market space is considerable.
In the field of vehicles, thanks to the intelligentization of automobiles and the rapid improvement of screen loading rate, the overall demand still shows a significant growth trend. According to the data of Qunzhi Consulting, the total shipment volume of the on-board display market is expected to be about 164 million pieces in 2021, an increase of about 22% year-on-year.
From the perspective of the development trend of technical specifications of in-vehicle display products, with the increased exploration in the cockpit, the trend of on-board display to high resolution, large size and extremely narrow frame is developing. Under the active promotion of Tianma, AUO, LG Display, TCL Huaxing and other panel manufacturers, LTPS LCD performance is very eye-catching, especially with the help of the development trend of large size more than 10 inches of the main products and HUD head-up display loading rate increased, LTPS LCD vehicle display product penetration rate grew rapidly. According to the latest calculation of Qunzhi Consulting, it is estimated that the global LTPS LCD vehicle display panel shipment volume will be about 19 million pieces in 2021, an increase of about 83.4% year-on-year, and the penetration rate will increase to about 12%, showing an overall rapid growth trend.
From the perspective of the technology trend of small and medium-sized panels, OLED panels have basically occupied the market share of high-end mobile phones, and gradually penetrated into the low-end field. The LTPS LCD panel has lost momentum in the field of mobile phones, which is bound to seize more market share in IT, automotive and other markets.
(Proofreader/James)
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