According to the latest Omdia Industrial and Public Display & OEM Intelligence Service, the use of industrial displays in specific vertical markets has increased such as gaming, human machine interface, fitness, medical, smart retail, transportation, touch monitor, smart home and office, industrial, outdoor, rugged and others.
The comprehensive report from Omdia which focuses on key industrial display applications and recently expanded the report’s definition and sub applications to 50 products, found that by the end of 2023, industrial display shipments are expected to decline to 355 million units, down 8.8% year-on-year (YoY). Omdia expects industrial display demand will rebound steadily from 2H24, with 10% YoY growth in a year. In 2023, issues such as over-booking, inflation and high inventory were prevalent for industrial displays. However, there are still innovative application products that are entering mass production before the end of 2023 such as projectors, electronic door locks, faceplates, and desktop live broadcast equipment. Omdia expects industrial display demand will rebound in 2024-26 as shown in figure 1.
Thin film transistor (TFT) LCD remains the main display technology for industrial displays and is expected to account for 48% of industrial display shipments in 2023. The remaining 52% shipment share comprises passive-matrix OLED (PMOLED), passive-matrix LCD (PMLCD), active-matrix OLED (AMOLED), and passive-matrix EPD (PMEPD) technologies. Panel sizes of the TFT-LCD-based industry displays range mainly between 1 and 27 inches in which 10.1-inch and below occupy more than 50% shipment share. Industrial panels are highly customized products with a large variety of panel specifications available for different environment needs. The business portfolio of panel makers could be open cell, module, touch panel module or set. The relationship in the supply chain is complex and there are many co-competition relationships in the vertical market that help products be competitive and unique.
The main players for industrial display makers are Tianma, BOE, Innolux, AUO Display Plus (ADP) and Truly. As Chinese display makers are estimated to take the lead of the industry display shipments with 59% share in 2023, Omdia Principal Analyst, TzuYu Huang commented, “Recently some of the Korean and Chinese panel makers have been fairly aggressive with their investment into AMOLED display technology, not only for IT displays but to leverage potential industrial display industry market opportunities. For instance, there are some industrial applications that have started to adopt the AMOLED displays instead of TFT-LCD, such as home appliances, gaming consoles, translation pens, portable monitors, gas stations, industrial handheld devices, and in-flight entertainment.
“Omdia expects that AMOLED display have a potential to grow in the industrial display applications in the coming years. But TFT-LCD is still a main display technology so that to develop the new and innovative industrial display applications for vertical markets continuously will be critical to sustain and drive the business opportunities growth in the coming years,” concluded Huang.