The report describes the state of the industry, describes the technological features and also compares the performances of the major technologies (CSTN-LCD, TFT-LCD, VFD, etc) of the car display; introduces the production and market states of the car display before market and after market, mainstream technologies and featuring of the car display panel. The report also analyzes the future development of the car display market, introduces car display TFT-LCD, STN-LCD, OLED, VFD manufacturers, and the production and sales states of China's car manufacturers.

1. The car display market has a huge development potential

Compared with 2004, the scale of the car display market (including STN, TFT, VFD, and OLED) in 2005 is expected to increase by 10%, mainly because of the popularization of the a-Si TFT display in the car market. With the applications of navigation system and backseat entertainment system, the amount of a-Si TFT displays is expected to increase 13% during 2004-2005.

To consumers, the cost of car display can almost be ignored if compared to the cost of a car. Thus, the image effect is the consumers’ first concern, while price comes second. Therefore, car display market is worth considering for those who own high-end display technologies.

2. VFD is more applied in car instrument panels

Instrument panel is a standard configuration of car, whose market scale is steadily increasing with the development of the car industry. VFD instrument panels were used only in top-grade cars and Japanese cars in the past, but now many medium or even low-end cars feature VFD instrument panels. Thus VFD application in car instrument panel will be further expanded.

3. a-Si TFT-LCD will be mainstream technology in car display field in the next few years

The TFT-LCD technology used in car display panel is mainly a-Si TFT-LCD which is advantageous both in price and performance, and which will be the absolute mainstream technology in the next few years. LTPS TFT-LCD car display panel has only one major manufacturer – Toppoly, its market share is very low, but with the improvement of production yield and cost structure, it can surpass a-Si TFI-LCD in the future.

4. 7-inch and 6.5-inch car display panel are currently the most common

Currently, sizes of car display panel are mainly 6.5-inch and 7-inch, accounting for 33.8% and 41.7% respectively; only a few adopt 5.8-inch or 8-inch. Most of the car displays are wide screen, and the resolution is usually 480x234. Due to the consumers' demand for higher resolution and for displaying more information, future mainstream car display panel will be 10-inch, and the resolution will be 800x480.

5. More car displays will be installed in cars in the future

Car display market includes car navigation device, car TV and car information system according to its applications. According to the time of assembly, it can be divided into before market and after market. Before market is difficult to enter due to the strict authentication, while after market which needn’t to be authenticated is the largest market (20 times of the before market) currently. With the car navigation system becoming the standard configuration, the percentage of before market will be gradually increased. According to statistical information, about 5% of the 59 million cars were built with GPS or NAVI in 2003, and 13.8% with car displays. The percentage will increase in 2004, and about 16% of the 60 million cars will be built with car displays.

6. Most of the car display LCD panel and before market car display manufacturers are Japanese manufacturers

The production of car display LCD panel is almost monopolized by Japanese manufacturers; TMD and Sharp only take over 80% of the market. The manufacture of before market car display is also centralized by Japanese companies; Panasonic, Fujitsu, and Pioneer take 40%. A reason for that is the strength of the Japanese enterprises in medium and small-size fields; another is that most of the cars with LCD displays are Japanese cars, such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, etc.