The focus of the global panel industry is accelerating its shift to mainland China

"Lack of cores and few screens" was once a "hidden pain" that restricted the healthy development of China's electronics manufacturing industry. As various regions in the country have continued to increase investment in the flat-panel display industry in recent years, China is gradually becoming an important panel production base in the world, and the center of gravity of the global panel industry has accelerated to shift to mainland China.

In March of this year, multiple domestic high-generation LCD panel production lines successively announced the start of production: CEC Panda Nanjing's 8.5-generation line was put into production, BOE's Chongqing 8.5-generation line was put into production, and the first 55-inch panel of CSOT's second 8.5-generation line in Shenzhen was lit, setting a record for the largest production capacity increase in the LCD panel industry in the same month.

The center of gravity of the global panel industry is accelerating to shift to mainland China

According to predictions from Top Industry Research Institute, China may have eight 8.5-generation lines in mass production at the same time in 2015, becoming an important global panel production base. By then, the contradiction between supply and demand of global panel production capacity may become more prominent.

While spending huge sums of money to lay out the above-mentioned high-generation panel production lines, Chinese panel companies such as BOE and Hehui Optoelectronics are also actively investing in "next-generation display technologies" such as amoled (active matrix organic light-emitting diodes) and successfully achieving localization.

Reporters recently learned from Shanghai Hehui Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., a company jointly invested by the Shanghai Municipal Government and the Jinshan District Government, that Hehui Optoelectronics has been the first to ship amoled displays in large quantities in China since the fourth quarter of 2014. Huang Yongqiang, head of marketing and sales of Hehui Optoelectronics, revealed that the company is preparing for the second phase of the production line project, and the total investment in the next five years is expected to be about 40 billion to 50 billion yuan.

In the information age, flat panel displays are becoming ubiquitous, and panels are indispensable and critical core display components for consumer electronics such as flat panel TVs, tablets, and smartphones. As the world's largest manufacturer of electronic consumer products, China will also become the world's largest and most important display screen demand market in the future.

South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have always been the main producers of panels in the world. In order to break the dilemma of panel supply being restricted by others, mainland China has actively developed the flat panel display industry in recent years, gradually forming four major flat panel display industry clusters in the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, Bohai Rim, and Sichuan and Chongqing regions. China's panel global market share has increased year by year, and mainland China has become the region with the most intensive investment in panel production lines in the world.

The industry predicts that with the mass production of multiple panel production lines in 2015, China's flat panel display industry growth will continue to lead the world. China's panel market share in the global market is expected to rise to 15%, and the self-sufficiency rate of domestic panels is expected to increase to more than 70%.

According to the "2014-2016 New Display Industry Innovation and Development Action Plan" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by 2016, China's new display industry will rank second in the world in terms of shipments by area, with a global market share of more than 20%, and the overall industry scale will exceed 300 billion yuan.

The Ping An Securities report believes that China's overall panel industry chain currently has a good foundation for development. In the future, with the advancement of the reform of state-owned enterprises, China's local panel companies will set their goals to compete in a higher industry high-generation line industry chain. By then, the increase in the industry's overall self-sufficiency rate will be more conducive to the healthy development of a good industrial ecosystem.

Experts said that in the next few years, the global display industry structure and competition situation will undergo profound changes. On the one hand, with the gradual release of China's panel production capacity, competition in the global display industry is becoming increasingly fierce; on the other hand, the development of new display technologies is changing with each passing day, giving birth to major breakthroughs and changes.