Backlighting in Mobile Phones Has Encountered Difficulties in China
China's CCID Consulting says the revolutionary application of backlighting in mobile phones has encountered difficulties in China. With the rise of mobile phone production centers in China, the transfer of the world mobile phone industry to the Chinese inland and the imminent commercialization of 3G in China, mobile phone production by local registered companies and joint ventures added up to over 442 million handsets in 2006. Over 95% of those phones had full-color screens. In the meantime, full-color mobile phones moved towards bigger screens and higher resolutions.
Pushed by the rapid increase of mobile phone production, LED backlight market demands reached 1.62 billion Yuan, an increase of 36.8% over 2005. Due to the increasingly larger percentage of full-color mobile phones, white-light LEDs became the absolute hero of the backlight market. However, the backlight market has had some difficulties:
Mobile Phone LED Demands and Growth in China in 2002-2006
Source: CCID Consulting, Feb., 2007
Few Changes in Brand Structure.
Manufacturers of LED backlighting have been increasing in China in the past couple of years. Though increases of secondary manufacturers tend to scratch some market shares, the relatively high-speed growth of mobile phone production ensures a relatively large demand for LED backlighting. As a result, new secondary manufacturers have not had much influence on the production of front-line backlight manufacturers. The LED backlight market in China is still dominated by Shianyih Electronics, Waichi Electronics, Pepnice Opto- Electronics and so on.
With more entrants into the backlight market, greater pressure for lower prices has led to price wars, which will have a definite impact on the profitability of the companies.
Replacement products hardly challenge the dominant LED. As OLED features advantages such as self-lighting, with no need for backlighting, high contrast, thinness, wide angels, fast reaction speeds, a wider temperature scope, simple structures and efficient procedures, it is considered the most promising monitor following the LCD. And OLED mobile phone screens have always been regarded as the most significant application of OLED products, which may influence the development of LED backlight markets.
However, OLED did not perform well on the mobile phone screen market recently. This is mainly because small production caused high product costs, which could only be reduced through larger scales. At the same time, TFT-LCD manufacturers modified assembly lines to enhance production of medium- and small-sized products, resulting in rapid price reduction of TFT-LCD products. Currently, LCD screens are still the predominant mobile phone screen.
On the other hand, although white-light OLED panels serving as backlighting are well-received by manufacturers, there is no mature commercial production due to immature technology.
OLED's poor performance in mobile phone screens and the unreadiness of white-light OLED panel backlighting for official commercial applications makes LED the unshakable hero of the mobile phone backlight market."
Posted to the site on 8th June 2007
