Economic Observer Network reporter Zheng Chenye said that after three consecutive years of “bottoming out” market demand, the first key word for the display panel industry in 2024 is “recovery.”
“In 2023, domestic LED display market demand will recover, and overseas markets in North America and Asia, Africa and Latin America will continue to grow. Entering 2024, Mini LED displays will continue to show rapid growth, and applications such as all-in-one machines, virtual shooting, and outdoor high-definition will also “Continuing to grow steadily, the global LED display market is expected to grow by 10%.” At a new display seminar held in Shenzhen on March 21, Yu Bin, research manager of TrendForce, a well-known high-tech industry research institution, said Analyze recent market trends.
At the same time, reporters also learned that in the LCD field, the current TV panel inventory level has also dropped significantly to a healthy level, and TV panel prices have rebounded significantly since January this year. According to TrendForce estimates, LCD TV panel sales in the first quarter of 2024 Shipments will reach 55.8 million pieces, a quarterly increase of 5.3%.
West China Securities also stated in a research report published on March 15: “TV panel prices in early March were close to the price high in September last year. Due to good downstream demand expectations and equipment manufacturers preparing goods in advance, current supply and demand are still tight. , it is expected that panel prices will still rise in Q2 (second quarter), and TV panel prices are expected to exceed last year’s high.”
Recently, reporters from the Economic Observer Network visited TCL Huaxing’s manufacturing base in Suzhou Industrial Park for investigation. Relevant staff at the base told reporters that TCL Huaxing’s factory is gradually increasing production capacity this year.
“From the demand side, we have observed that inflation in Europe and the United States is declining, and the overall purchasing power of consumers is increasing. Coupled with the boost of domestic holidays, it will bring comparisons to our products, whether it is TVs, notebooks, or monitors. A big improvement. Therefore, our forecast for the overall demand for panels is more optimistic than last year.” Liu Xiaolan, vice president of TCL Huaxing, told reporters.
Giant screen tv
At the recently held China Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo (AWE), reporters found that TCL, Samsung, and LG (Korea’s Lucky Star Group), the three leading brands in the color TV field, simultaneously brought their own important products to the same exhibition hall. Pounds new.
Directly opposite the TCL exhibition area, LG presented its latest 83-inch G4 series OLED self-illuminating TV. Samsung held a press conference for its new 85-inch Mini LED TV in the JD.com exhibition area.
As the “old rival” of the two Korean companies in the global market, the new TV products brought by TCL are even more “eye-catching”: in TCL’s exhibition area, there is a TV about 2 meters long and 3.6 meters wide. , with a size of up to 163 inches, equivalent to four 80-inch screen superimposed Micro LED giant screen TVs.
At the exhibition site, the reporter noticed that the first reaction of many consumers who gathered in front of this giant-screen TV when they saw the TV was: “It doesn’t look like a TV, it looks like a movie theater screen.”
This brand-new giant-screen TV made TCL steal the spotlight at the AWE exhibition. In the words of Lu Chunshui, general manager of TCL Industrial China Marketing Division, “TCL has become the biggest ‘conspicuous package’.”
Of course, what is also “conspicuous” is the price of this TV – 799,999 yuan. This price implies that TCL’s positioning of this product is not in the consumer market. To this day, reporters have not seen this product on any of TCL’s official sales channels.
But for TCL, the high-profile display of a 163-inch giant-screen TV at the AWE show is a demonstration of the company’s technical strength in the panel field.
“We also noticed at the scene that basically all the friends and senior management teams in the display field were taking photos here. We are also very proud. We believe that TCL has accumulated enough technology in the display field and today it is the fastest The speed is enough to launch the current leading products in the industry.” Talking about the new giant-screen TV products released by the company, Lu Chunshui said in an interview with a reporter from the Economic Observer Network.
It is not difficult to see that the rapid breakthrough of display panel technology has become a key factor for Chinese color TV companies to “conquer cities and territories” in the global market. On February 23, Omdia, a well-known market research organization, announced the ranking of global TV shipments in 2023. The top three TV brands are Samsung, TCL and Hisense, while LG dropped to fourth place.
Behind the changes in rankings is the rapid evolution of the market structure. Since 2009, Chinese companies have accelerated their entry into the panel field through rapid iterations in display technology, especially large-scale investment and development in OLED, Mini LED and Micro-LED technologies. Research and development have accumulated significant technological advantages.
Three major paths
Currently, in the upgrade plan surrounding LCD (liquid crystal display) panel technology, OLED technology, which is gradually expanding its application scenarios, and new display technologies represented by mini LED and Micro-LED are the three main technical paths.
The differences between these three technical routes mainly lie in their construction principles, performance characteristics and application fields.
During the exchange at the AWE exhibition, the reporter learned that Mini LED technology, as an optimized version of traditional LED, provides better display contrast and brightness control by using smaller LEDs as backlights, and is especially suitable for large-size displays. ; OLED technology, with its self-luminous characteristics, can achieve higher contrast and wider viewing angles, is suitable for screens of various sizes, and can also realize bendable and foldable terminal designs; Micro-LED technology is While providing similar high contrast and viewing angles to OLED, it also has higher brightness and longer service life, but currently has higher production costs.
So, among these three major technology paths, which one will become the mainstream in the market? According to Sun Li, chief technology officer of TCL Industrial, the key to the answer lies in user needs.
“The starting point of all technological innovation is the user. Nowadays, everyone doesn’t watch TV very much. I think the problem is not that consumers don’t watch, but that the experience of this product needs to increase in technological innovation, which is solved with new experiences. Due to the shortcomings of the old experience, this differentiated experience must break through a certain threshold before users are willing to perceive this experience.” Sun Li told reporters.
Sun Li further cited the popular TV series “Flowers” at the beginning of the year as an example to reporters. If the TV picture looks dark, then the delicate colors and layers of “Flowers”, which mainly focus on night scenes, will be difficult to reflect. In his view, the quality of picture quality can be measured by “blackness” (that is, the depth of black and contrast that the screen can display). To achieve ultimate black performance and high contrast, you need to rely on the support of new technologies.
Therefore, TCL has launched a TV using Mini LED technology. By adding a large number of partition controls based on LCD technology, each cell can accurately control the display effect of the corresponding pixels, thus greatly improving the picture quality.
“Mini LED technology uses a lot of partitions behind the LCD technology, which means that each point corresponds very well to the pixels in front. For example, in the previous shadow puppet show, there was only one light bulb, and the picture quality was definitely not that good. . Therefore, consumers’ demands for image quality technology are very simple, that is, it should be bright, the color should be good, and the black and white should be clear, so that when watching relevant scenes, the tension and details will be highlighted.” Sun Li said.
It is worth noting that the current three major technology paths in the display panel field also target different end products and application scenarios. For example, the flexible backlight control of Mini LED technology makes it popular in the large-size display market; OLED technology provides ultra-high contrast and wide viewing angles due to its self-luminous properties, and is mainly used in high-end smartphones and monitors. Folding devices, bendable devices, tablets, wearable devices and other fields; Micro-LED technology has great potential in the high-end display market and public display fields due to its excellent brightness, long life and energy efficiency ratio.
At TCL CSOT’s Suzhou production base, reporters learned that the shipments of e-sports displays produced at this base have grown at a relatively high rate in recent years. Lu Chunshui told reporters in this regard that the continued growth of e-sports market demand in recent years has put forward higher requirements for display technology, especially in terms of refresh rate, response time and color performance.
TCL CSOT follows this market trend and focuses on developing and producing high-performance displays that can meet the needs of e-sports players and professionals. The features of these e-sports displays include faster refresh rates to ensure smooth images and reduce smearing. ; Shorter response time, improving the real-time nature of game interaction; and a wider color gamut, presenting richer and more accurate visual effects.
“No matter how popular these (display) technologies are, they must always be developed around users’ pain points and changes in user needs.” Sun Li said.
Sports New Year
At present, for the display panel industry, it has become an initial consensus that the market will usher in an inflection point in 2024, especially the large-scale sports events that will be held intensively in the second half of 2024, which is expected to accelerate the recovery of demand in the TV market.
Orient Securities analyzed in a research report published on February 24: “2024 is a big year for sports. The America’s Cup, European Cup, and Olympic Games will be held in 2024. The second quarter will usher in the concentrated release of sports events to stimulate demand. stage. According to past rules, in the years when sports events are held intensively, the demand for black electricity (referring to household appliances related to audio and video, such as TVs, stereos, etc.) has increased to varying degrees.”
However, in discussions with industry insiders on the current status of the TV market, the reporter also observed that many practitioners are currently worried that the rebound in demand will stimulate a rapid increase in display panel prices, and the rapid rise in upstream prices is obviously detrimental to the recovery of downstream demand.
In this regard, Liu Xiaolan told reporters that in the past two years, on the supply side, the panel manufacturing industry has experienced significant changes, the most critical of which is the change in business philosophy.
“As an asset-heavy industry, panel factories have always set full production and full sales as their operating goals in the past. However, starting from the second half of the year before last (2022), our business philosophy has undergone fundamental changes. From the original full production to full sales The sales model has shifted to a strategy of determining output according to market demand. At present, the entire panel manufacturing industry has generally adopted this flexible production adjustment method to adapt to customer needs. Observing the objective situation of the market terminal, we can find that no matter which field it is in, the overall Inventories are maintained at a relatively healthy level, and this change is an important result of the panel factory adjusting its business philosophy,” said Liu Xiaolan.
In her view, panel manufacturers maintaining a healthy inventory status can help maintain price stability and, to some extent, avoid large fluctuations in panel prices in the past.
Qiu Yubin, senior deputy general manager of research at TrendForce, also pointed out at the above-mentioned new display seminar that the supply policy of panel manufacturers has changed from “quantity is king” in the past to “quality first”, and panel manufacturers are becoming more Construct production plans pragmatically based on demand.
It is worth mentioning that although market demand is expected to rebound, it is an indisputable fact that the shipments of major display panel end products have shrunk in recent years, with the TV field experiencing the most severe decline. According to Omdia statistics, global TV shipments will still be 225 million units in 2020, but this has dropped to 212 million units in 2023.
How to find incremental space in a stock market? Many people in the industry have focused the answer on the “content” level, because for the consumer electronics, especially the TV market, without sufficient content support, the appeal of technological innovation and hardware updates will be greatly reduced.
For example, during the National Two Sessions in 2024, TCL founder and chairman Li Dongsheng said in an interview with a reporter from the Economic Observer Network that to promote the high-quality development of China’s high-definition display industry, the way to break the situation is to increase the attractiveness of TV content. .