A Guide to Display Panel Industry

Display panels are referred to the electronic viewing devices that enable people to view a piece of information in the form of images. These mostly comprise still images, moving images or texts, or any other visual material. Today, display panels hold immense market potential with the growing consumer electronics industry. The growing gaming and entertainment industry are further contributing to propelling the market growth. Also, the advent of mobile devices including smartphones, laptops, and tablets are propagating the market demand at present and in the upcoming years. Industries such as healthcare, transportation, and others integrate display panels into their equipment for providing a user-friendly interface for viewing data.

The growing HMI industry is further fueling the display panel market demand, also the adoption of touch screen panels has strengthened further market growth prospects. Human machine interface is an important tool providing convenience to the operator for interaction or machine control, or the entire process. HMI evolved from hard wired push buttons and indicator lights on a control panel to digital visual touch screens. Traditional HMIs lacked any sort of visual display. The operator had to constantly rely on the audible feedback, and alarm systems, in addition, push buttons were utilized for controlling the process. The next HMI panel consisted of text panels or alpha numeric-based operator interfaces. The hard-wired push buttons and indicator lights were replaced by the text panels having membrane push buttons on them. The only advantage of this type of panels was that an operator was capable of reading pre-programmed messages onto the LCD screen. Hence, providing the information to the operator in a visual format. Thus, in an HMI industry, since the onset of text panels, display panels started gaining momentum. With the revolution in industrial automation, there was a rise in the adoption of more refined control systems and visualization commodities. Slowly, touch screen models came into being with advanced graphical displays replacing text display panels with better screen resolution. This provided flexibility to a programmer in designing visually pleasing screen, also, the screen can provide a user or an operator what is going on in the entire plant without the need to manually conduct the scanning process. This is because of the fact that everything is displayed right onto the HMI screen.

The growing disposable income, especially in the developing economies of the world have put a significant impact on the market growth. The major reason lies in the fact that with the growing consumer disposable income, the willingness to spend on premium consumer goods, like kitchen appliances and other electronic gadgets, has certainly risen. This has resulted in the surge of the display panel demand for incorporation in these devices. The rising middle-income-population of the developing countries like India and China from the Asia Pacific region has provided a large consumer base for the consumer goods market to proliferate. Additionally, the increase in family income, with more than one earning member, specifically, with women entering the main workforce is also contributing to the market growth. The increasing global final consumption expenditure is adding to surge the display panel market growth. As per the World Bank predictions, the final consumption expenditure of the world grew from USD55.417 trillion in 2015 to USD63.083 trillion in 2018. In China, the final consumption expenditure grew from USD5.972 trillion in 2015 to USD7.65 trillion in 2018. In India, the final consumption expenditure rose from USD1.461 trillion in 2015 to USD1.91 trillion in 2018.

Source: The World Bank Group, Final Consumption Expenditure, World, India, and China, in USD Trillion

Significant investments in display panel manufacturing facility are providing an impetus in surging the market growth. In 2020, Samsung Display announced its investment of USD500 million in India. The investment amount will be dedicated towards setting up a manufacturing unit for the production of smartphone displays. The Korean company, Samsung recently, in 2018 inaugurated a smartphone manufacturing plant in Noida for expansion of its presence in India, the second-largest mobile phone market after China. Samsung Displays novel manufacturing unit to be located in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, is geared to help its parent organization in securing smartphone display panels at a cheaper rate and enhancing productivity.

The growing adoption of wearables worldwide is further propagating the display panel market demand. This can be assessed through numerous innovative wearable product launches. In 2019, Huami announced the release of the multiple series of novel and innovative wearable products at the consumer electronic show, 2020. The event was announced to take place in Las Vegas. The world’s largest company is poised to expanding its Amazfit portfolio beyond the smartwatch range. With growing consumer demand for health and fitness products, the company aims to build a strong foundation and ecosystem of wearables with a focus on health and fitness management.

In 2020, Huawei announced the launch of its next wearable, Huawei band 4 product. The novel product is equipped with heart rate monitor, oxygen saturation, and sleep monitoring features. The wearable fitness tracker band device consists of an in-built USB charging port, with a long-lasting battery, for nine days on a one-time full charge. The band has a colour touch screen display in addition to a glass front with 2.5D with an oleophobic coating. The band provides 9 exercise modules that include outdoor run, rowing machine, outdoor walk, free training, outdoor cycle, elliptical machine, indoor walk, and indoor cycle. In addition, there is a provision for setting reminder alarms. The band offers other features as well apart from the health and fitness capabilities, these include cold calls identification, remote shutter, smart clock, and phone finder features.

The increasing popularity of digital signage is providing an opportunity for the market to thrive at a significant pace. One can see the increasing adoption of digital outdoor signage in almost every industry vertical, hotel industry, at retail locations, transportation facilities, entertainment venues such as a sport event, and many more. The major reasons for its growing popularity are attributed to the dynamic and interactive content, it is cost-effective in comparison to the traditional broadcasting boards, digital signages have shown improvement in remembering the content, thus, contributed to increasing the content retention rates. Furthermore, digital outdoor signages are designed in a way that can be easily understood, even in direct sunlight, further providing the consumers with a much better viewing experience than before. Also, the availability of innovative outdoor-specific screens capable of enduring wind, high and low temperatures, and moisture is further offering robust market growth prospects.