AMOLED becomes the focus of competition in the global flat panel display industry

Flat panel display As a basic and leading industry of the electronic information industry, it has entered a new historical stage after more than ten years of rapid development. Its outstanding performance is that the second-generation display industry represented by TFT-LCD has entered a relatively stable development period. It is expected that the annual growth rate of global TFT-LCD panel output value (including LTPS- LCD ) will only be 1% to 3% after 2013, and the downward trend of PDP will be more obvious. In contrast, the third-generation display technology AMOLED has shown an unexpected development trend. Its panel output value is expected to increase from US$3.36 billion in 2011 to US$18.5 billion in 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 53%. The challenge to mainstream TFT-LCD technology is becoming increasingly apparent.

AMOLED market has huge potential

AMOLED has become the focus of a new round of competition in the global flat panel display industry.

As an emerging technology, AMOLED has unique competitive advantages compared with TFT-LCD, such as more realistic colors, thinner, lighter, simpler process, lower production cost, and easy to bend and flexible. The huge demand potential, wide market application, and long industrial life of AMOLED panels are beyond the reach of current display technologies. For this reason, although the mainstream position of TFT-LCD will remain stable in the next 5 to 8 years, its expected market growth and technical improvement space are increasingly limited, and the intensity and difficulty of peer competition will continue to increase. In contrast, AMOLED, which has just entered the industrialization stage, still has huge room for improvement in technology, and its explosive market growth is also within expectations. AMOLED is becoming the focus of a new round of competition in the global flat panel display industry. At present, the world's mainstream panel manufacturers have increased their strategic investment in OLED , and the most representative one is Samsung Electronics of South Korea. As the world's largest LCD panel manufacturer, Samsung has long occupied a leading position in the industry with its advanced technology. Recently, Samsung Electronics has split its TFT-LCD department and fully developed its AMOLED business. Its approach is of reference significance for the development of the industry.

Leapfrogging is also possible

From the perspective of individual companies, flat panel display technology has the potential for leapfrog development.

The development of flat panel display technology is a gradual process. The development of a new generation of technology will inevitably be based on the industrial scale and technical foundation of the previous generation of display technology, which is the case between TFT-LCD and AMOLED. According to statistics, the equipment overlap between TFT-LCD and AMOLED is as high as more than 70%, and the proportion of process overlap is even higher. Therefore, there is no inherent contradiction between the development of AMOLED and TFT-LCD. In fact, the world's leading companies in AMOLED technology basically have a strong liquid crystal industry foundation and solid technical reserves. Moreover, for China's current development, both of them are gaps that need to be filled urgently. Therefore, it is logical for some domestic companies to choose to develop high-generation TFT-LCD with large demand and mature technology to intervene in OLED.

From the perspective of the macro industry and technology, although the development of display technology is gradual and cannot be leapfrogged, there would be no LCD without CRT, no OLED without LCD, and the LCD technology itself must have gradually developed from the 1st, 2nd, 2.5th generations to the 10th generation today. However, we cannot completely deny the other side of the matter. That is, at the micro level, from the perspective of a single enterprise, there is indeed the possibility of leapfrog development in display technology, whether in the past or in the future. For example, some domestic companies started directly from the 8th generation of LCD panel lines without much accumulation and foundation of industry experience in the early stage, and also achieved quite remarkable results. From this point of view, it is also worth looking forward to some companies that, after carefully weighing various internal and external factors, directly choose to use higher-generation AMOLED production lines as a breakthrough in the field of flat panel displays.

Therefore, if we look at it from a combination of macro and micro perspectives, we can well explain the relationship between the current development of TFT-LCD and AMOLED.

Policy support and regulation are still needed

Like TFT-LCD, the development of AMOLED also depends on government support and regulation.

As for the Rainbow Group, as a large central enterprise in China's flat panel display industry, the Rainbow Group has chosen to focus on AMOLED in order to achieve leapfrog development in the field of flat panel displays. At present, the Rainbow Group is fully promoting the construction of China's first 4.5-generation AMOLED production line at its Foshan base in Guangdong. The project investment is nearly 5 billion yuan. After it goes into production, it will process 30,000 glass substrates per month. The products are mainly small and medium-sized panels for mobile phones, home appliances, etc., and provide related OLED products for many IT and home appliance manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta region where this project is located.

Prior to this, Rainbow Group had already made long-term technical and talent reserves in the field of OLED. In fact, Rainbow Group was the first to intervene in the research and development of OLED in China in 1997, and independently built a PMOLED production line in Foshan in 2010. At present, the production line has sold related products in batches. In terms of AMOLED, the pilot line built by Rainbow Group in Foshan has trial-produced and successfully lit up 3.2-inch monochrome and full-color AMOLED panels, and has made many important technological breakthroughs and patent accumulation in major links such as materials, evaporation, backplane, drive , packaging, and testing , providing solid technical preparation for the construction of 4.5-generation AMOLED mass production lines. At present, Rainbow's 4.5-generation AMOLED production line has completed preliminary preparations, such as plant design, infrastructure construction, process flow establishment, product research and development, process document preparation, equipment specification formulation, etc., in order to strive to achieve China's strategic positioning and leapfrog development in this field during the current golden period of AMOLED industrialization.

Like the TFT-LCD industry, the development of AMOLED also depends on the support and regulation of the government. The recently issued "12th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Electronic Information Manufacturing Industry" and its sub-plan "12th Five-Year Plan for Electronic Basic Materials and Key Components" have given a high status to the flat panel display industry including LCD and OLED, and put forward the stage goal of "the average annual growth rate of the flat panel display device industry will exceed 30%, and the sales revenue will reach 150 billion yuan in 2015, and the scale will increase from the current 5% to more than 20% of the global share". At the same time, the plan also clearly puts forward a full range of support policies, such as financing, talents, intellectual property rights, regional layout, etc., which is a great benefit to enterprises. Enterprises will seize market opportunities and fully develop the flat panel display industry.