Where will the LCD industry go after Japanese and Korean manufacturers withdraw from the LCD industry?

Recently, Japanese LCD panel company Sharp has made a decision to discontinue production of large LCD panels for televisions by the end of September. Another manufacturer JDI has also announced that it will discontinue production before March 2025. Japanese LCD panel companies have basically abandoned the LCD display panel market. Previously, South Korean LCD panel giants Samsung and LGD had already announced the official discontinuation of LCD panels in 2022. Samsung Display completely abandoned its LCD panel business and shifted its focus to OLED panels; LGD has stopped its local LCD TV panel production line in South Korea and shifted its development focus towards OLED, aiming to gain a first mover advantage and initiative in markets such as OLED. This has had a profound impact on the global display panel industry landscape,

Why do Japanese and Korean companies choose to withdraw from LCD panel production? According to data, Sharp's net loss for the 2023 fiscal year was 149.9 billion yen, and it has been losing money for two consecutive years. The sluggish LCD display market is the biggest factor causing Sharp to suffer losses for two consecutive years, coupled with rising raw material and labor costs, limited production capacity, decreased market voice and competitiveness, and increasing losses. Therefore, the decision to suspend production was made.

Previously, Japan and South Korea had dominated the LCD industry, but now, Korean and Japanese panel manufacturers have successively withdrawn, bringing development opportunities to Chinese LCD panel manufacturers. With the improvement of China's comprehensive national strength and the rise of economic strength, Chinese LCD panel manufacturers have occupied a large share. From the perspective of shipments in recent years, the market share of BOE and TCL Huaxing, the top two panel manufacturers in Chinese Mainland, is more than half. At the same time, LCD panel manufacturers continue to make efforts, gradually investing in production lines and increasing investment. Manufacturers such as BOE, Huike, and Rainbow have developed rapidly. As South Korean and Japanese companies gradually withdraw from the LCD field, the competitive advantage of Chinese panel companies in the LCD field is becoming increasingly evident globally, and their discourse and pricing power in the LCD panel industry chain are steadily increasing.

Does the abandonment of LCD by South Korea and Japan indicate that LCD has been phased out? This needs to be analyzed from several aspects.

From the current market demand, LCD is still a mainstream in the display panel industry. International market research institutions believe that in the coming years, LCD panels will continue to be the mainstream technology product in the display industry, and the cyclical nature of LCD panels is weakening. Compared to OLED, LCD still has significant advantages in terms of display performance and price, and the demand for LCD in the future market remains stable. The shipment volume of large-sized televisions and other products is constantly increasing, and there is still a large demand for commercial LCD displays. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has also brought a huge market for human-computer interaction device display panel business.

From the current technical perspective, the position of LCD remains stable. OLED does not have advantages in large-scale display applications such as displays and televisions, and is mainly used in the field of small-sized displays. Currently, OLED is mainly used in small and medium-sized devices such as smartphones and tablets, and is superior to LCD in terms of flexibility, color, contrast, etc. However, LCD panels can still maintain some of the mid to low-end markets due to their cost advantages. OLED is currently limited in sales due to factors such as high cost and low yield, coupled with a huge price difference. In the era of large screens, traditional LCD screens will still dominate the market, and LCD is still the most mainstream display panel application technology. Especially in non mobile medium and large display application scenarios, its position is unshakable in the short term.

From a long-term development perspective, there is a high possibility that the LCD market share will decline and OLED will rise in the future. Although the current OLED application market is relatively focused on small-sized applications, with the continuous development of OLED technology, the application of large-sized OLEDs will become more and more common. Faced with high profit emerging fields, many enterprises will gradually transform and develop OLED display panels, and LCD panels will eventually be replaced by leading display technologies such as OLED.