[Running on a new track] Breaking through the “screen” neck and “showing” the future smoothly

For a long time in the past, the problem of "lack of cores and lack of screens" has restricted the development of my country's electronic information industry. Nowadays, my country's new display industry ranks among the top in the world in terms of scale and technological innovation capabilities. LCD TVs that once cost tens of thousands of yuan can now be purchased for just a thousand yuan. Behind this is China's new display industry constantly catching up and making unremitting efforts on the new track, and finally achieving the goal of moving from following to leading.

At the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics more than a year ago, the "Chinese-style romance" stunned the world and remains unforgettable for many people. The success of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics is inseparable from the technological support of China's new display industry. The stage floor for the opening and closing ceremonies uses the world's largest 8K ultra-high-definition ground display screen made in China, with a total area of more than 10,000 square meters. With naked-eye 3D, AI and other technologies, the audience can deeply feel the beauty of the integration of display technology and art.

Geng Yi, chief researcher in the display field of China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute:

"In such a large scenario, not allowing any screen to malfunction also reflects our quality level in this aspect."

Statistics show that by 2021, the output value of my country's new display industry and the proportion of display device (panel) shipment area in the global market will increase to 36.9% and 63.3% respectively, becoming the world's first. However, just over 20 years ago, China could not manufacture even one LCD panel and had to import it at a high price.

At that time, the display screens of Chinese TV computers widely used CRT picture tube technology, and the large-head monitors produced were large and bulky. When the advanced technology of light and thin LCD panels emerged, the traditional CRT picture tube industry immediately faced the fate of being abandoned by the market.

Liang Xinqing, Executive Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the LCD Branch of China Optics and Optoelectronics Industry Association:

“At that time, I was panicking, the companies were panicking, and the government also realized that this was a very scary thing. If this panel is put on If we don’t come, half of China’s electronic processing industry formed in the past 20 years or so will probably collapse, because if you don’t have anything, the price will be extremely high if you buy it all.”

At that time, the Chinese people really felt the pain of “less screens”. In those years, LCD panels ranked among the four commodities with the largest total value imported by China, after integrated circuits, crude oil and iron ore. As a major color TV production and assembly country, China's display industry is faced with the choice of changing to a new track and manufacturing its own LCD screens. However, liquid crystal displays integrate many high and new technologies such as semiconductors, optoelectronics, and new materials. It is not easy to develop it yourself from scratch.

Liang Xinqing:

"At that time, the technical blockade was very strict. This was a big profit maker, and it was in their hands. It was impossible to move it to China. At that time, there was only one way left, that is, could the Chinese do it themselves?"

In 2003, Chinese companies finally got their chance. Affected by the Asian financial crisis, South Korea's Hyundai Group reported that it would sell its LCD business. BOE, which was unknown at the time, seized the opportunity and spent US$380 million to acquire Hyundai's 3.5-generation LCD panel production line, which represented China's official entry into the new LCD track.

Liang Xinqing:

"BOE is the most thrilling and risky, but it is also the most thorough and has no intellectual property issues. I bought it all and we got the technology. Those of us who went there also learned part of the on-site management and process technology, including R&D and marketing."

While BOE introduced and absorbed new liquid crystal technology, it immediately began to innovate independently. They used new technologies and talent accumulation to independently develop and build a fifth-generation LCD panel production line in Beijing, which was put into production in 2005. In the display panel industry, the higher the generation line number, the larger the display panel size produced.

However, the LCD panels produced by the 5th generation line cannot satisfy China's color TV industry. To produce LCD panels for TVs, 6th generation and above panel production lines must be built. In 2008, with the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the price cycle of the LCD industry also entered a downward trough, and BOE faced a loss crisis. However, to the surprise of many people, BOE decided to invest in the construction of mainland China's first 6th generation LCD panel production line in Hefei.

Liang Xinqing:

"At that time, the capacity of TV sets in the world was already hundreds of millions. To replace hundreds of millions of TVs, the market must be very large. This thing has great room for growth in the future. There was no turning back at that time."

Geng Yi:

"Chinese companies are making counter-cyclical investments and have increased investment. investment, thereby increasing our panel production capacity, or panel share in the entire world.”

In just a few years, China’s new display companies have made great efforts to catch up with the world’s advanced technology. China has intensively launched multiple LCD panel production lines, forming multiple competitive industrial clusters. By 2016, there were 25 LCD panel production lines in mainland China, with a cumulative investment of more than 400 billion yuan. In 2017, mainland China's LCD panel shipments surpassed South Korea for the first time and jumped to the top of the world.

Geng Yi:

"After this period, our production capacity reached the first place in the world. Soon our actual sales volume and actual share became the first in the world. This is an important sign that we can surpass."

While the field of LCD display is booming, Chinese companies are beginning to target the emerging new track of OLED display represented by flexible screens. OLED is the English abbreviation of organic light-emitting diode display. Many of the displays of smartphones we use now are OLED. Compared with liquid crystals, OLED displays have the advantages of fast response, high color gamut, high contrast, and flexibility, and are widely used in terminal products such as smartphones and tablets. However, for a long time, the mass production technology of OLED flexible screens has been dominated by Korean companies. It was not until around 2017 that Chinese companies represented by BOE and Visionox independently developed China's sixth-generation flexible screen production line and began official mass production, that the global supply pattern in the OLED field began to be rewritten. So far, Chinese companies have invested in the construction of more than 10 OLED display production lines, with rapid growth in production capacity. They have also continuously launched a series of world-leading products, rapidly narrowing the gap with Korean companies.

The reason why Chinese new display head companies such as Visionox and BOE continue to launch world-leading products is their unremitting R&D innovation. BOE’s annual R&D investment accounts for about 7% of its revenue, and its cumulative patent applications have exceeded 80,000. BOE announced that it will invest more than 50 billion yuan in technology research and development in the next three years. Visionox is my country's first OLED display company. After more than 20 years of continuous independent innovation, it currently owns more than 10,000 key patents in the OLED field, and has participated in the formulation or revision of a number of OLED international, national and industry standards.

Only through innovation can we take the lead, and only through innovation can we surpass. China's new display companies not only continue to innovate and develop in traditional display fields such as TVs, mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and monitors, but also with the vigorous development of the digital economy and the blessing of 5G technology, Chinese companies are also actively exploring new needs and seizing market segments in public display, industrial display, commercial display, vehicle display, e-sports entertainment, education, medical and other fields.

Tianma is a leading company in the field of small and medium-sized displays and one of the first companies in China to lay out vehicle-mounted display technology. As China becomes the largest country in the production and sales of new energy vehicles, Tianma's market share in the field of vehicle-mounted displays has achieved global leadership.

Geng Yi:

"Vehicle display is a huge incremental market for new displays in the future. We can no longer just transplant the original simple display into the car and call it a vehicle display. Instead, we need to tailor a display suitable for the application of the smart cockpit."

A car display integrates the sky Tianma's newly developed driver monitoring system under-screen camera display technology can hide the camera at any position under the vehicle display screen, and through Tianma's original algorithm smart chip, it can not only perform facial recognition and eye movement trajectory tracking on the driver, but also identify the driver's behavior through deep learning.

In addition to the fields of LCD and flexible screens, Chinese companies are also keeping a close eye on the latest display technology development trends and actively deploy cutting-edge technologies such as laser display, printed display, and micro-LED display to seek long-term technological advantages in the industry. In May this year, during the 2023 International Display Week, Visionox announced their latest development of metal-free mask RGB self-aligning pixelization technology, which caused shock internationally.

Geng Yi:

"If we really want to be a leader, we must have our own ideas and our own path on the technical route. If we keep following the path of others, we may always be half a step behind."

Show everywhere. As the main carrier of information presentation and the main window for human-computer interaction in the digital era, the Internet of Everything is now promoting rapid updates and iterations of display technology and products, and is deeply integrated with smart cities, smart healthcare, smart education, smart retail, smart homes, the Internet of Vehicles, future factories, industrial Internet and other fields. Display has changed our lives, and it will definitely make our lives more convenient and better in the future.