Analysis Of The Upstream, Midstream And Downstream Markets And Enterprises In China's LED Panel Industry Industry Chain In 2021

LED is called the fourth-generation lighting source or green light source. It has the characteristics of energy saving, environmental protection, long life, and small size. It is widely used in various display, indication, decoration, backlight, lighting and urban night scenes. As the LED technology matures, the cost of lamp beads is reduced, and the cost performance is gradually improved, the penetration rate of LED products in various downstream applications is increasing, and the scale of my country's LED market continues to increase.

1. Industry chain

The upstream materials or components mainly include liquid crystal materials, glass substrates, polarizers, backlights, driver chips, etc.; the midstream is mainly processing and manufacturing by panel manufacturers, and the main processes include cleaning, coating, exposure, etching, electroplating, etc. . The follow-up process includes inspection, cutting, placement, module, boxing and so on. Downstream are the applications of various LED panels such as general lighting, backlighting, landscape lighting and so on.

2. Upstream analysis

1. Liquid crystal material

Liquid crystals are divided into single crystals and mixed crystals. Any single crystal cannot be directly used for display. The liquid crystal display material formula needs to mix 10 to 20 different single crystals, which we call mixed crystals. Single crystal is an indispensable material for mixed crystals. Mixed crystal producers produce part of the single crystals themselves, and the rest are produced by professional single crystal producers.

Compared with mixed crystal, the added value of single crystal is low, and the production center has shifted to my country. Domestic manufacturers of single crystal mainly include Yantai Wanrun, Xi'an Ruilian, and Shanghai Kangpeng. The technology monopoly of mixed crystal is relatively strong, and three companies, Merck of Germany, Chisso of Japan, and Dainippon Ink (DIC) occupy 96% of the market. Domestic companies engaged in mixed crystal materials mainly include Chengzhi Yonghua and Tsinghua Yawang, whose products are mainly used in the low-end market, accounting for about 70% of low-end products.

2. Glass substrate

Glass substrate is a high-performance glass, one of the most important raw materials upstream of the LED panel industry, and one of the raw materials with the highest transportation cost. The reason why it occupies such an important position in the industry chain is that the resolution, transmittance, weight, and viewing angle of liquid crystal displays are closely related to the performance of the glass substrate.

The global profit of nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars was mainly divided by four manufacturers. Corning (including the Samsung Corning joint venture) accounted for about half of the global market. Japan's Asahi Glass and Electric Glass accounted for 25.8% and 19.6% of the share, respectively. Special accounted for 3.6%.

3. Backlight module

The backlight module is the most expensive part of the display panel, accounting for more than 20% of the cost, but it is not technically difficult and belongs to a labor-intensive industry. Most of the backlight modules in the world are produced in my country. However, about 60% of the cost of the backlight module comes from the optical film, which mainly includes diffusion film, reflective film, brightness enhancement film, etc. The domestic progress in this respect is good, and the development speed is very fast. Ningbo Jizhi Technology, which focuses on the production of diffusion film, reflective film, and brightness enhancement film in China, is also growing rapidly. The domestic-made Kangdexin of optical film is the leading force, and it is already one of the largest optical film manufacturers in the world.

4. LED driver chip

The LED driver chip has been developed along with the technological breakthrough and application of the three primary colors of the LED chip. Since the invention of blue LEDs based on gallium nitride and indium gallium nitride, after adding phosphors on the basis of blue LEDs to obtain white LEDs, the emergence of blue and white LEDs has expanded the applications of LEDs, making applications such as full-color display and LED lighting become may. As the main lighting source, white light requires a huge drive current. At this time, high-efficiency drive modules and drive technology have developed rapidly in accordance with the market trend. The drive chips specially designed for LED applications have continued to break through in technology, and the scope of application is The scale continues to expand. In the next few years, multiple advantages such as policy-driven, industry technology path and development trend, and market demand will benefit the development of the driver chip industry, and the LED driver chip market has a broad prospect. The data shows that the domestic LED driver chip market scale was 1.55 billion yuan in 2015, and it is expected that the market size will reach 4.65 billion yuan by 2020, and the market penetration rate will reach 36.10%.

5. Analysis of key enterprises

3. Midstream analysis

1. LED packaging market scale

LED packaging is the process of fixing the LED light-emitting die on the PCB or bracket to complete the electrical connection, and using epoxy or silicone to encapsulate and cure to protect the die from working normally. At present, the global LED packaging industry is mainly concentrated in China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States and other countries or regions. Compared with the epitaxy and chip industry, the LED packaging industry in mainland China has already achieved a considerable scale, with a technological level close to the international advanced level, and has become an important LED packaging production base in the world. In recent years, with the gradual transfer of global LED production capacity, my country has become the world's most important LED production base. With the support of national industrial policies and the continuous upgrading of LED technology, the output value of my country's LED packaging market has gradually increased.

2. Display

With the development of LED device materials and breakthroughs in LED display control technology, thanks to the continuous development and maturity of the industry chain, the LED full-color display market has developed rapidly, and its application fields have been continuously extended, gradually replacing the traditional single and double color screens, projections, etc. Display products have become the mainstream large-screen display products both indoors and outdoors.

At present, small-pitch LED displays generally refer to indoor LED displays with LED dot pitches below 2.5mm. Small-pitch LED displays have shown superiority in seamless splicing, picture performance, and cost of use. They are more cost-effective and have an increasingly stronger substitution effect on DLP and LCD. Therefore, the small-pitch LED display market is expected to become the highlight of the industry's continued growth in the future. In the future, the small-pitch LED market will gradually start to expand. China Commercial Industry Research Institute predicts that China's small-pitch LED market will reach 9.8 billion yuan in 2020.

Data source: China Commercial Industry Research Institute "2020 China's Small Pitch LED Industry Market Prospects and Investment Research Report"

3. Analysis of key enterprises

The picture below is a summary table of my country's LED LCD panel manufacturers:

Fourth, downstream analysis

1. Tablet PC

LED backlight mode, long life, low cost, slightly higher performance than TN screen, the current mainstream tablet computers are all using LED display. In the next few years, China's tablet computer market will continue to grow due to the growth of education and entertainment demand, the entry of more industry participants, and the release of more competitive new products. It's just that the growth rate will slow down as the overall flat-panel market increases. It is estimated that the Chinese tablet market will ship 25.06 million units in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%. The consumer market is expected to grow by 7.2% year-on-year. The commercial market is expected to fall by 4.3% year-on-year.

2. Mobile

LED is a display screen composed of light-emitting diodes. Compared with LCD displays, LED displays have more advantages in brightness, power consumption, viewing angle and refresh rate. The resolution of LEDs is generally lower and the price is more expensive because of higher integration. Obviously, in the pursuit of lighter and thinner mobile phone products with lower energy consumption, LED panels are becoming more and more popular. According to the database of the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, the national mobile phone production in December 2020 was 164.955 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 2.6%.

3. Color TV

The LED backlight display technology uses LED light sources, that is, light-emitting diodes as the backlight source. In fact, there is no essential change in its panel, so LED TVs also belong to LCD TVs. Regardless of the backlight technology, the principle of the liquid crystal itself is the same, and it needs to use auxiliary light sources to emit light. With the development of technology, LED has become the preferred technology for all LCD display backlights. At present, when everyone talks about LCD TVs, they will default to TVs that use LEDs as the backlight source. According to the database of the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, the output of my country's color TV sets increased from 162.065 million sets in 2015 to 196.22 million sets in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 3.9%. The output is expected to reach 208.010 million sets in 2021.

For more information, please refer to the "Research Report on China’s LED Panel Industry Market Prospects and Investment Opportunities" issued by China Commercial Industry Research Institute. At the same time, China Commercial Industry Research Institute also provides industrial big data, industrial intelligence, industrial research reports, industrial planning, and park planning. , Fourteenth Five-Year Plan, industry investment and other services.