Status Analysis of the LCD Industry

 

The LCD panel industry can be divided into upstream basic materials, midstream panel manufacturing, and downstream end products. Upstream basic materials include glass substrates, color filters, polarizers, liquid crystals, driver chips, etc. The midstream involves LCD liquid crystal display production lines, while the downstream consists of end products such as televisions, computers, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics.

From the perspective of the upstream driver chip industry in the industry chain, the shipment volume of display driver chips has been increasing annually, while the proportion of TFT-LCD display driver chips has been decreasing. According to statistics, in 2021, the shipment volume of display driver chips in China reached 4.66 billion pieces, among which TFT-LCD display driver chips accounted for 3.75 billion pieces, making up 80.5%. The shipment volume of TDDI and AMOLED display driver chips was 670 million and 230 million pieces, respectively.

 

In terms of the global market size of the LCD display panel industry, according to relevant data, the global market size of the display panel industry reached 139.2 billion US dollars in 2021, with the LCD display panel market size being 97.3 billion US dollars. It is predicted that the global panel market size will decrease to 109.5 billion US dollars in 2022, representing a 21.40% year-on-year decline. In 2023, the market size is expected to slightly rebound to 115.6 billion US dollars.

Regarding the global distribution of LCD production capacity, with the rapid development of the domestic panel industry, China's LCD panel production capacity has been continuously increasing, breaking the long-term technological monopoly of Japanese and Korean manufacturers. According to statistics, China's LCD production capacity accounted for 50% of the global capacity by 2020, making it the world's largest and the main production and consumption hub for LCD products.

As for domestic LCD industry capacity, according to the statistics of the China Electronic Materials Industry Association, China's LCD capacity in 2021 was 204.89 million square meters, representing a 16.42% year-on-year growth from 2020. It is also estimated that China's LCD capacity will reach 286.33 million square meters by 2025, with a CAGR of 8.73%.

Currently, the main display panels are TFT-LCD panels and OLED panels, which are applied to different market segments and user scenarios. LCD panels are still the mainstream application, while OLED is experiencing rapid development. LCD panels are widely used in various display fields, including televisions, monitors, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and commercial displays. OLED is primarily used in high-end smartphones, wearable devices, and small-sized products.

TFT-LCD, due to its mature technology and continuous improvement in manufacturing processes, demonstrates strong comprehensive competitiveness in terms of display performance and production costs. On the other hand, OLED technology employs thin organic material coatings, which emit light when current passes through them, eliminating the need for backlight modules and liquid crystals, making products thinner, faster in response, and capable of flexible displays. However, due to the instability of organic luminescent materials, high production costs, more complex manufacturing processes, longer research, and development cycles, and industrialization application cycles compared to TFT-LCD, improving yield rates and reducing costs for OLED is more challenging. Therefore, TFT-LCD technology, with its advancing technology, improved yield rates, reduced costs, and mainstream display performance continues to dominate the market. In addition, new semiconductor display technologies like Mini LED and Micro LED are emerging, and it is expected that they will have a certain market space in the future.

TFT-LCD display panel manufacturing consists of three modules: Array Process, Cell Process, and Module Process. The Array Process includes five major steps: gate electrodes, insulation layers, data electrodes, contact holes, and pixel electrodes production. Each step can be further divided into film formation, photoresist coating, exposure, development, etching, photoresist removal (stripping), inspection, and other processes. In the manufacturing process of large-screen, high-definition panels, the metal ions and individual dust particles contained in wet electronic chemicals can cause significant defects in panels. Therefore, the purity and cleanliness of wet electronic chemicals have a crucial impact on the yield of display panels.