Investment into LCD to dry up by 2022, says IHS Markit

After more than a decade of dominance, the LCD market is starting to implode. Analyst company IHS Markit expects investment into LCD to completely dry up by 2022.

OLED investment to surge
Samsung has announced that it will transition away from LCD to focus on next-generation technologies such as QD-OLED. Panasonic will end production of LCD panels by 2021 and LG Display is reportedly planning to halve LCD TV panel production next year.

IHS Markit now expects investment into LCD equipment to completely dry up by 2022. The final investment into the sector will happen in 2020 as BOE expands its 10.5G LCD line and CSoT (TCL) makes investment into its 10.5G factory.



This is a major shift after LCD has dominated display sectors, ranging from TVs to handheld screens, for more than a decade. Plasma remained a niche in TVs until it disappeared. However, in recent years we have seen OLED emerge as a superior alternative to LCD in many applications.

IHS Markit expects investment into OLED to surge over the next five years as more panel makers, including Samsung Display, JOLED, and CSoT, get involved in earnest. The next phase after OLED could be microLED - tiny inorganic light emitting diodes - but IHS Markit does not expect microLED to reach the mass-market before 2026.

- Source: IHS Markit via The Elec