China has become an important engine driving the development of global semiconductor display technologies, which have immense application potential in a wide range of fields such as vehicle-mounted displays, wearable gadgets, culture and education, and healthcare, China Daily reported on December 9.

According to a report released by market research firm CCID Consulting, the revenue of China's display industry exceeded RMB580 billion ($83.2 billion) in 2021, up 40.5 percent year-on-year, accounting for 36.9 percent of the global display market.

The country's annual production capacity of display panels has reached 200 million square meters this year, ranking first globally, which has greatly promoted the application in smartphones, televisions, laptops, tablets and other display devices.

In addition, China's new display industry has witnessed rapid growth, with the compound annual growth rate reaching 25.8 percent from 2012 to 2021.

The new display industry mainly includes organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) displays and micro/mini light-emitting diodes (micro/mini LED) displays. Compared with traditional liquid crystal displays, the new display technologies have great improvements in terms of image contrast, brightness and color spectrum, thus further accelerating the upgrade of the display industry, experts said.

Wang Jiangping, vice-minister of industry and information technology, emphasized the significance of leveraging new display technologies to bolster economic growth and supporting enterprises to expand the application in vehicle-mounted devices, smart homes, virtual reality and other emerging sectors.

“More efforts are needed to continuously enhance the resilience of the industrial and supply chains, make breakthroughs in core technologies of the new display industry and consolidate the enterprises' prominent role in propelling technological innovation,” Wang added.

Liu Wenqiang, deputy head of CCID Consulting, said the new display industry, which serves as the terminal in the information age and a key field of the digital economy, is a basic, forward-looking and strategic industry.

"As the world's largest panel manufacturing base, and research, development and application area, China has become an important engine bolstering the development of the global display industry," Liu said, adding that display technologies have empowered several fields like consumer electronics, digital cultural innovation and digital healthcare.

Xu Fengying, vice-president and chief operating officer of Visionox, said the shipment of foldable phones equipped with flexible OLED display screens is expected to surpass more than 100 million units by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent.

China will overtake South Korea to become the biggest OLED manufacturer by 2024, as more Chinese companies have invested heavily in new OLED production lines, said Zhou Hua, chief analyst at CINNO Research, a Chinese flat panel display consultancy.

Sigmaintell Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm, showed that global shipments of flexible OLED panels are expected to reach 405 million units in 2022, with Chinese display makers accounting for about 36 percent of the market share.

"The penetration rate of OLED displays in the mobile market is expected to reach 50 percent by 2024, and about 60 to 70 percent of sales revenue will be contributed by OLED technologies by then,” reported China Daily, quoting Li Yaqin, general manager of Sigmaintell.