What Display Daily thinks: It’s going to be a heavy season of about two months worth of display industry events, meet-ups, and conferences around the world and online. The WDIC in China is an interesting case in point, unlike other events, which seem to be focused around product launches and new technologies, it provides a blueprint for China’s determination to succeed in the display industry.
There is a general thread of commonality that runs through a lot of the presentations that have been coming out of China, and that is the need to collaborate and work together, a reference for the need for Chinese companies upstream and downstream in the supply chain to align themselves for the greater good of the industry. No doubt this is further enforced by the threat of US sanctions on China’s tech industry.
The key takeaway, the thing that you get when you pull at that thread of commonality, is the emphasis of all technology categories that are relevant to making it possible for displays to be everywhere. TCL is already making its own AI image processing chips, for example, and BOE is pretty aggressively pursuing application software strategies of its own, as another example. This binding and synching of technologies in and around display manufacturing is not an innovation, but the size of the effort in China should cause competitors a pause.
There is no guarantee that Chinese companies can maintain the pace and level of investment that is needed to fight through sanctions, create home-grown companies to replace foreign suppliers, and grow their markets, but if history has taught us one thing, it is that sanctions end up making the sanctioned more resilient and innovative. That’s a frightening thought when you consider the size and capacity of the Chinese manufacturing industry.
So, collaboration should be viewed as the key metric of success for the display industry supply chain, and how much of that collaboration is with companies that are considered outside of traditional display supply chains is also a measure of success. That could mean ad platforms for connected TVs or IoT sensors under glass or integrated AI services.
The World Conference on Display Industry 2023 in Chengdu
The 2023 World Conference on Display Industry (WCDI) is happening this week in Chengdu. All the major regional players in the display industry—BOE, Tianma, Visionox, etc.—are there in force as well as companies like Applied Materials and Merck KGaA. This is the conference’s 5th year. The event features prominent Chinese display industry figures and will focus on trends like MicroLED in speeches and exhibitions. The Chengdu-Chongqing region in China is a major hub and claims to be responsible for about 30% of the country’s display industry output.
The main theme of the conference is displays are everywhere but there is also a commitment to green manufacturing processes, and most prominently collaboration among suppliers to bring the supply chain for Chinese displays closer together.
The conference itself is a combination of government, industry bodies, and commercial companies coming together to promote the local regional development of the display industry, but it is also a chance for networking and showcasing. And, much like the recent K-Display, the WCDI is also a place where the public gets to see the industry in action with plenty of VR and AR demos, and display-focused attractions.
