After the unremitting efforts of panel manufacturers, global panel production capacity has been continuously transferred to China. At the same time, China's panel production capacity has grown at an amazing rate. The world’s largest LCD manufacturer, and the acquisition of CEC Panda in 2020 will further consolidate its leading position.
Facing the unique LCD competitive advantages of domestic manufacturers, Samsung and LGD manufacturers have announced that they will withdraw from the LCD market, but the outbreak of the epidemic has caused a mismatch between panel supply and demand. To ensure the normal supply of their own terminal product panels, both Samsung and LCD announced delays to close LCD production line.
Panel is the leader of the optoelectronic industry, LCD and OLED are the mainstream products
The panel industry mainly refers to the touch display panel industry for electronic devices such as TVs, desktop computers, notebooks, and mobile phones. The current era is already the era of information. The role of information display technology in people's social activities and daily life is increasing. 80% of human information is obtained from vision. The interaction between various information system terminal devices and people requires information. Display to achieve. The panel industry has become the leader of the optoelectronic industry, second only to the microelectronics industry in the information industry, and has become one of the most important industries.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, the panel industry can be divided into upstream basic materials, midstream panel manufacturing and downstream terminal products. Among them, the upstream basic materials include: glass substrates, color films, polarizers, liquid crystals, targets, etc.; midstream panel manufacturing includes: Array, Cell, and Module; downstream end products include: Televisions, computers, mobile phones and other consumer electronics.
Chart 1: Industry chain of panel industry
At present, the two mainstream products in the panel market are LCD and OLED. LCD is better than OLED in terms of price and service life, while OLED is better than LCD in terms of blackness and contrast. In China, LCD accounted for about 78% of the market in 2019, while OLED accounted for about 20%.
Chart 2: China's panel display market structure in 2019 (unit: %)
Global panel transfer to China, China's LCD production capacity is No. 1
The inventor of liquid crystal technology is the American, and it is the Japanese who used the liquid crystal technology extensively and made technological breakthroughs. The "hegemony" of the LCD industry has changed hands from the United States, Japan, South Korea to China four times in less than 60 years.
In 1962, American Radio Corporation developed the first liquid crystal display model, and then related technology was introduced to Japan. Japan had almost crazy investment in liquid crystal. By the 1990s, Japanese companies had almost monopolized the entire liquid crystal market. Companies with the spirit of "LCD Craftsman" represented by Sharp have contributed to the research and development of LCD technology.
In the mid-1990s, South Korea took advantage of the downturn in the liquid crystal cycle to expand significantly and replaced Japan in the 2000s. By 2009, the domestic BOE announced the construction of the 8.5 generation line, breaking the technological blockade between Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Subsequently, Japanese and Korean companies such as Sharp, Samsung, and LG, at an astonishing speed, finalized plans to build 8th generation lines in China. Since then, the LCD industry in mainland China has entered a ten-year period of rapid expansion.
Figure 3: A brief history of the development of the global panel industry
In September 1998, Northern Caijing introduced a first-generation LCD panel production line from DTI, Japan. Because of the lack of core technology, the company was unable to sustainably develop. In 2003, some Chinese enterprises introduced LCD panel production lines again, but the product prices were not competitive due to patent fees. This attempt also ended in failure.
As of 2008, China's LCD panels were still completely dependent on imports, and even in China's annual consumption of imported materials, LCD panels were second only to oil, iron ore, and chips, and ranked fourth.
After recent years of development, my country's panel industry has come from behind. In 2015, my country's LCD panel production capacity accounted for 23% of the world's total. As South Korean manufacturers announced their withdrawal from LCD and then switched to OLED, global LCD production capacity has further gathered in mainland China. In 2020, my country's LCD production capacity has ranked first in the world, and mainland China has produced about half of the world's LCD panels.
Chart 4: The development history of China's panel industry
China's panel capacity growth rate is amazing
In addition, with the accelerated release of the production capacity of multiple LCD G8.5/G8.6 and G10.5 generation lines and OLED G6 generation lines, my country's LCD and OLED production capacity has maintained high growth, and the growth rate is far ahead of the global panel production growth rate. In 2018, the growth rate of my country's LCD panel production capacity even reached 40.5%. In 2019, my country's LCD and OLED production capacity reached 113.48 million square meters and 2.24 million square meters, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 19.6% and 19.8%.
Chart 5: 2015-2019 China and global LCD production capacity changes (unit: ten thousand square meters, %)
Chart 6: 2015-2019 China and global OLED production capacity changes (unit: ten thousand square meters, %)
The epidemic has caused panel prices to rise, and Korean factories postpone their exit from the LCD market
The outbreak of the global epidemic in 2020 has led to the adoption of lockdown measures around the world, and models such as remote office and distance learning have spawned a consumer wave of notebook computer electronic terminal products, superimposed on the shortage of upstream materials, and the global panel has entered a new round of price increases in June 2020. cycle.
According to WitsView's latest quotation, the average price of 55"W (3840 x 2160) panels has risen from US$103 in June 2020 to US$176 in early January 2020, an increase of US$73 in just 7 months.
Due to the lack of a panel supply chain, stand-alone prices are still supported, and this round of price increases is expected to continue into the second quarter of 2021.
