Global shipments of small- to medium-size panels will decrease from 2.647 billion units in 2017 to 2.189 billion units in 2021 or a CAGR of negative 4.6%, according to Digitimes Research.
The decrease will be mainly due to fast growing adoption of AMOLED panels for smartphones, Digitimes Research indicated. In view of the trend, Samsung Display, LG Display and Japan Display have or plan to shut down TFT-LCD factories, mostly 5G and 6G facilities, to expand AMOLED capacity.
While global handset-panel shipments will grow from 2.545 billion units in 2017 to 2.757 billion units in 2021, a CAGR of 2.0%,TFT-LCD panels will slip from 2.095 billion to 1.630 million units at CAGR of negative 6.1%, while AMOLED panel shipments will rise from 450 million to 1.127 billion units, a CAGR of 25.8% over the period.
Japan Display, Sharp, BOE Technology, Tianma Micro-electronics, EverDisplay Optronics (Shanghai) and Visionox are each expected to start AMOLED panel production in 2018-2019.
As local vendors have dominated China smartphone market, and a few are seeing increasing global market shares, China will overtake Taiwan in terms of TFT-LCD handset-panel shipments in 2016 or 2017.
