Makers of Main Displays for Mobile Phones Ship 275 Million Units in First Quarter
June 21st, 2006DisplaySearch reports 274.6M main displays for mobile phones, along with 58.6M sub-displays, were sold in 1Q’06, with total revenues of US$3.3B. Active-matrix (AM) displays - nearly all of them LCDs - accounted for more than 73% of the total shipments, up from 63.5% a year ago. According to the company’s latest Quarterly Mobile Phone Shipment and Forecast Report, this trend is expected to continue, with the AM share reaching 78% in 3Q.
Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor
of HDTV Retailer and
Mobile Display Report
The AMLCD displays utilize two basic technologies for fabricating their active-matrix backplanes - the arrays of transistor switches that turn the pixels on and off. These are the traditional amorphous silicon ("a-Si" in the table) and the higher-performance low-temperature polysilicon ("p-SI" in the table) that allows drivers and even the timing controller (TCON) to be fabricated directly on the display glass. Both types are increasing their shares at the expense of monochrome and color passive-matrix (STN) technologies.
Mobile Phone Display Revenue Shipment Share by Technology
|
Technology
|
Q1′05
|
Q2′05
|
Q3′05
|
Q4′05
|
Q1′06
|
Q2′06
|
Q3′06e
|
|
MSTN
|
3.1%
|
4.0%
|
4.4%
|
4.2%
|
3.7%
|
2.8%
|
2.7%
|
|
CSTN
|
33.1%
|
31.9%
|
28.2%
|
25.9%
|
22.8%
|
20.4%
|
19.5%
|
|
a-Si
|
42.1%
|
43.2%
|
47.0%
|
49.5%
|
50.9%
|
54.7%
|
55.8%
|
|
p-Si
|
21.4%
|
20.6%
|
20.3%
|
19.9%
|
22.5%
|
21.9%
|
21.8%
|
|
OLED
|
0.3%
|
0.3%
|
0.1%
|
0.4%
|
0.1%
|
0.2%
|
0.2%
|
|
Total
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
(Source: DisplaySearch)
Although a significant surge in the use of active-matrix OLED displays for main displays is expected around the turn of the year, the DisplaySearch table does not forecast out that far. At the moment, BenQ-Siemens has the only shipping mobile phone with an OLED main display, as Bart Jeroen van der Bent, Director of Product Management at TPO, reminded Insight Media recently.
Among mobile-phone display manufacturers, Samsung SDI remained on top with 45.9M units (16.7%) shipped in Q1, but Sanyo Epson (13.4%), Philips (12.6%) and Sharp (9.8%) are all gaining ground. Number 5 supplier, Wintek lost ground in the quarter. Together, these top-five suppliers accounted for more than 60% of the mobile-phone panels shipped during the quarter, said DisplaySearch.
Technology trends? Look for sales of 2.0- to 2.4-inch displays in both QVGA and VGA formats for high-end phones to increase, and look for some of those displays to incorporate a white sub-pixel for increased power efficiency and image brightness. When OLEDs break out of their less-than-single-digit status at the end of this year, the bulk of the shipments will come from SDI, with Toshiba and AUO to follow.
