China's Car Display market study in 2005

The report described the status of the industry, and the technological features and performance comparison of the major technologies (CSTN-LCD, TFT-LCD, VFD, etc) of the car display; introduced the production and market status of the car display before market and after market, mainstream technologies and configuration of the car display panel. The report also analyzed the future development of the car display market, introduced car display-used TFT-LCD, STN-LCD, OLED, VFD manufacturers, and the production and sales status of China's car manufacturers.

1. Car display market has huge development potential

Compared with 2004, the scale of the car display market (including STN, TFT, VFD, and OLED) in 2005 is expected to increase 10%, which is mainly because of the popularization of the a-Si TFT display in the car market. With the applications of navigation system and backseat entertainment system, the amount of a-Si TFT displays is expected to increase 13% during 2004-2005.

To consumers, the cost of car display can almost be ignored comparing with the costly car. Thus, the image effect is the consumers� first concern, while price is the next. Therefore, car display market is worthy of consideration for those who own high-end display technologies.

2. VFD is more applied in car instrument panels

Instrument panel is a standard configuration of car, whose market scale is increasing stably with the development of the car industry. VFD instrument panels were used only in top-grade cars and Japanese cars in the past, now many medium even low-end cars configure VFD instrument panels. Thus VFD application in car instrument panel will be further expanded.

3. a-Si TFT-LCD will be mainstream technology in car display field in the next few years

The TFT-LCD technology used in car display panel is mainly a-Si TFT-LCD which is advantageous both in price and performance, and which will be the absolute mainstream technology in the next few years. While LTPS TFT-LCD car display panel only has one major manufacturer � Toppoly, the percentage is very low, but with the improvement of production yield and cost structure, it has chance to surpass a-Si TFI-LCD in the future.

4. 7-inch and 6.5-inch car display panel are mainstream currently

Currently, sizes of car display panel are mainly 6.5-inch and 7-inch, accounting for 33.8% and 41.7% respectively; only a few adopt 5.8-inch or 8-inch. Most of the car displays are wide screen, and the resolution is usually 480x234. Due to the consumers' demand for higher resolution and for displaying more information, future mainstream car display panel will be 10-inch, and the resolution will be 800x480.

5. More car displays will be installed in cars in the future

Car display market includes car navigation device, car TV and car information system according to its applications. According to the time of the assembly, it can be divided into before market and after market. Before market is difficult to enter due to the strict authentication, while after market which needn�t to be authenticated is the largest market (20 times of the before market) currently. With the car navigation system becoming the standard configuration, the percentage of before market will be gradually increased. According to statistical information, about 5% of the 59 million cars were installed GPS or NAVI in 2003, 13.8% with car displays. The percentage would be grown in 2004, and about 16% of the 60 million cars will be installed car displays.

6. Most of the car display LCD panel and before market car display manufacturers are Japanese manufacturers

The production of car display LCD panel is almost monopolized by Japanese manufacturers; TMD and Sharp only take over 80% of the share. The manufacture of before market car display is also centralized in Japanese companies; Panasonic, Fujitsu, and Pioneer take 40%. The reasons for this one is because of the powerful strength of the Japanese enterprises in medium and small-size fields; the other is that most of the cars with LCD displays are Japanese cars, such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, etc.