Regarding the emerging DPF industry, this report gives a description of profit allocation, price trend of core parts, associated products (digital camera and cell phone with digital camera) market as well as pixel configuration. Besides, it also analyzes the market capacity of DPF products in the future and makes a research on the DPF main ship manufacturers, solution & design companies and DPF manufactories.

As digital camera and cell phone with high-pixel camera get popular, people has been used to keeping their photos by all kinds of storage devices such as PC HDD, semiconductor storage and CD-R. Even more, the photos that are printed out are now mostly from digital camera or cell phone with digital camera. But as the digital photos grow at geometric series, it will cost a lot to print the photos out, and moreover, the traditional photo frame and photo album are far enough to keep these photos. As a result, the DPF, a product that can keep and review these digital photos, comes into being.

Actually, DPF appeared in the year of 2001, but due to the high price, DPF market has been depressed until 2003. However, as main parts prices went down, so did DPF prices and its market began to pick up in 2004. In particular, the year of 2005 witnessed hot sales of DPF in Occident countries, even though, its shipment reached only about 1.5 million units. The shipment in 2006 is expected to increase by 233% over the same period of previous year. In the forthcoming several years, DPF market will develop more maturely and its output & sales and market demand will still keep growing at a high rate.

Statistics and Forecast of Global DPF Shipment, 2005-2009
 

Presently, the DPF platform is mainly for the application of medium- and small-size LCD units. DVD player platform is now most frequently used and multimedia application platforms such as PMP are also available but there are few platforms special for DPF. The solution based on DVD decoder chip is advantages in cost though, it can only support limited media formats and its function keeps undiversified.

Most of the DPF made in China exported to abroad before 2006. But as Philips took the lead in promoting DPF across China since the end of 2005 and made some progress in gift market, more domestic manufacturers have began to introduce DPF products in home markets since the second half of 2006, which caused the DPF price a decline. But generally, the price was still very high in 2006 and DPF gifts were the mainstream in DPF market then.

The critical value of average price has already reached USD 200 in Occident mass consumption market while it is only USD 50 in China. Although the average price in China still has a wide gap with the critical value, yet, as the prices of the core parts of DPF (Nand Flash and LCD panel) go down gradually, plus the more DPF manufacturers in the future as well as the emergence of DPF chip, the critical value can be reached soon. Once the mass consumption market starts up, DPF market may far better than MP3/MP4 markets for one person may need more than one DPF, he can put the DPFs in the office or on the desk and wall at home, so DPF market will see a great market potential.

2. DPF main chip manufacturers and solution suppliers
2.1 Mainstream solutions of DPF
2.2 DPF main chip manufacturers
2.2.1 SigmaTel
2.2.2 Sunplus
2.2.3 AMLOGIC
2.2.4 Jeilin Technology Co., Ltd
2.2.5 MXIC and Magic Pixel Inc
2.2.6 ESS
2.2.7 Myson Century, Inc.
2.2.8 MTK
2.2.9 Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd
2.2.10 ATMEL
2.2.11 Marvell
2.2.12 NXP (Fomer Philips Semiconductor)
2.3 DPF design and solution companies
2.3.1 Po-star
2.3.2 Joisted Technology Co., Ltd
2.3.3 Shenzhen High Victory Technology Co., Ltd
2.3.4 IPCore Technologies Co., Ltd

3. DPF manufacturers
3.1 Philips Multimedia Display Devices Division
3.2 Huaqi Information Digital Technology Co., Ltd
3.3 Newman
3.4 YOCOS Electronics Co., Ltd
3.5 Dizino Technology Co., Ltd
3.6 Shenzhen Phoebe Technology Co., Ltd
3.7 Sun Group
3.8 China Great Wall Computer Shenzhen Co., Ltd
3.9 Kodak
3.10 Polariod
3.11 SICONG Group
3.12 YungFu
3.13 Shenzhen AINA Technology Ltd
3.14 Shenzhen DPF Electronics Co., Ltd
3.15 Sungale
3.16 SkyVision Electronics Co., Ltd
3.17 KSMART