If there’s one thing that separates the wheat from the chaff in the oversaturated consumer electronics market, it’s displays. Bigger, brighter and better screens on smartphones, laptops and tablets are en vogue, with elements like color accuracy, crispness and definition being able to tip the favor of consumers towards one make or another.
It’s getting to the point where plain old displays just aren’t cutting it anymore. This is where next-gen displays come in.
The Global Next-Generation Display Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.2 percent from 2013-2018, as these fancy new displays step in to take the way we see, interact with and, well, display information.
In general, the Global Next-Generation Display market can be categorized into the following segments based on technology:
TechNavio analysts have put together a nifty cheat sheet on these next gen technologies, to help you keep an eye on which displays will be up-and-coming over the next four years.
Touch Screen Display
Touch screens are the displays we know and love. They’re user friendly, and have become the baseline for most smartphones. Even though this technology has already been adopted in a number of makes and models of smartphone, there’s still a lot of room for growth—in fact, the touch screen segment of the next-generation displays market is growing at a CAGR of 37.9 percent from 2013-2018.
High adoption of touch screen-enabled smartphones and tablets, and an increase in the number of devices integrated with touch screens such as TVs and projectors has also contributed to the growth of the market. The technology has become so ubiquitous that even devices like ATMs, POS systems, car displays and digital cameras now incorporate touch screen technology.
Compared with other technologies in the next-gen display market, touch screen displays are expected to display steady as opposed to aggressive growth. This is mostly due to the fact that the market is currently in its development stage and is expected to normalize during the forecast period.
3D Display
The Global 3D Display Market is growing at a CAGR of 25.0 percent over the next four years. Before you get your hopes up over a 3D phone, we have to point out that this technology hasn’t really penetrated the mobile market yet. It’s actually 3D TVs that are the biggest driving force behind growth in the 3D display market. Stringent government regulations pertaining to conventional display systems, wide adoption of set-top boxes in order to deliver more digital content in developing countries and the increase in 3D content are all expected to contribute to the growth of the market.
Flexible Display
All iPhone 6 jokes aside, a bendable, unbreakable phone, smartwatch or even tablet would be a great addition to anyone’s tech arsenal. And some serious headway has been made recently in the realm of flexible displays, the market for which is growing at a CAGR of 47.2 percent.
Basically, a flexible display is a foldable, bendable, and unbreakable next-generation display that uses plastic instead of glass. Currently, many industry participants like LG, Nokia, and Samsung are working to overcome the limitations of glass-based displays such as their weight, inflexibility, brittleness, and large size. At the moment, most manufacturers are targeting smartphones as the major segment of the flexible display market, as demand is very high and there is scope for a wide range of changes in the structure (shape and size) of smartphones.
Transparent Display
While it may sound like an oxymoron, projections for the transparent display market are through the roof, with a CAGR of 96.1 percent from 2014-2018. This impressive CAGR can mostly be chalked up to this being very new technology, and the fact that it’s actually really, really cool.
At a very simple level, transparent display technology uses transparent materials to produce invisible electronic circuits and optoelectronic devices. A transparent material is an insulator that possesses completely filled valence and empty conduction bands.
This technology is still very much in the research and development phase, with many display manufacturers racing to be the first to get these displays on the market. The Taiwanese company Polytron Technologies seems to be the first out of the gate, and has already created the world’s first transparent cellphone, which is expected to be commercialized in coming years.
