Li Dongsheng, Chairman of TCL Group: Cracking out the Industrial Dilemma

TCL Group Chairman Li Dongsheng

In recent years, with the development of the LCD panel industry in mainland China, a large number of mainland panel manufacturers have begun to rise. As early as in 2009, TCL began to invest in the establishment of China Star Optoelectronics. Today, China Star Optoelectronics is already the second largest company in mainland China in LCD TV panel makers. In order to better understand the development of the panel industry, recently "Daily Economic News" reporter interviewed TDL Group Chairman Li Dongsheng.

Crack the "non-core missing screen" industry dilemma

It is understood that the world panel industry was once the world of South Korea, Japan, China Taiwan and other countries and regions. "Lack of core and less screens" has become a pain point for mainland LCD TV brand manufacturers.

As early as 2008, the Chinese TV brand's share in the domestic market continued to rise. It suffered from a shortage of LCD panels. At the time, the leading panel manufacturers in the global panel market were panel companies in Korea and Taiwan, respectively. TV companies organized a group to go to Taiwan to purchase panels, but Taiwan’s panel companies preferred to supply panels to Korean companies, and Korean companies used TV companies that were sold to mainland China.

Li Dongsheng said, “The mainland has deeply felt the importance of developing its own panel industry. In 2009, Huaxing Optoelectronics was established and began to invest in the production of 8.5 generation LCD panels. Now TCL is the only company in China’s consumer electronics industry with vertical industry chain integration capabilities. The panel industry is the upper reaches of the industry chain, and the rapid development of Chinese panel companies will help enhance the competitiveness of Chinese brands, get rid of dependence on foreign high-tech products, and help break the “industry lacks core” industry dilemma.”

It is understood that China Star Optoelectronics has become the mainland's TV LCD panel makers with the second highest market share. The data shows that in 2016, China Star Optoelectronics' global TV panel market share was 13%, ranking fifth in the world. In the first quarter of 2017, China Star Optoelectronics had a 15% market share in the global TV panel market, ranking fifth in the industry.

Huaxing Optoelectronics currently has a 6-generation line and 2 8.5-generation lines. Both of the 8.5-generation lines have reached full production capacity. In addition to the current three production lines, Huaxing Optoelectronics also strategically plans for large-size and small-to-medium size OLED panels. The 11th generation LCD panel production line is under construction. The 6th generation flexible LTPS-AMOLED display panel production line project with an investment of 35 billion yuan was also officially constructed in Wuhan in June. The product is positioned as a display panel for high resolution, foldable smartphones. .

Global display industry grows mainly in China

Li Dongsheng said, “With the popularity of smart mobile terminals, small and medium-sized panels are rapidly developing. However, a large number of high-end mobile display screens in China need to be imported to meet the market demand for smart phones and tablets. As the key display technology for the next generation of smart phones and tablets At present, the main supply of AMOLED products is based on South Korea, and China's AMOLED technology is still in a catch-up period. However, the gap between flexible and collapsible AMOLED and foreign leading technologies is not large."

“The 11th generation line of TCL launched is currently the highest generation line in the global semiconductor industry. The establishment of the 11th generation line is a strategy formulated by TCL based on future market competition. From the current international competition system. There is also a gap between the size of the upstream industry and the international benchmarking companies. Therefore, we need a forward-looking perspective, focusing on the market demand trends, making arrangements in the upstream industry and improving manufacturing capabilities,” said Li Dongsheng.

In fact, in the past decade, the mainland's flat panel display industry has achieved leap-forward development, and the overall scale of the industry has ranked among the top three in the world. Although Japanese panel makers have mastered a large number of key technologies, they have gradually lost their price competitive advantage and compressed some of their panel production capacity. The panel production capacity began to be concentrated in South Korea, China Taiwan, and China Mainland. The mainland will soon become the world's largest LCD panel production base.

However, with the rapid expansion of the mainland's panel production capacity, there are still some outstanding problems in China's display industry, such as the overheating trend in industrial investment.

Li Dongsheng had previously said at the annual meeting of the Global Information Display Society in the United States that the global display industry is mainly growing in China, and there will be new capacity input in the future, and there is a risk of excess capacity. From the perspective of global market supply and demand growth, China's existing and under construction capacity has been fully released and industrial production efficiency has increased. It is expected that the supply and demand of the market will be basically balanced in the next 3 to 4 years. It is expected that the capacity of the Chinese mainland (including Korean companies' factories in China) will be equal to that of South Korea in 2018.