Taiwan’s Display Industry First to Mass Produce 8K TV Panels, According to TrendForce

The mass production of the long-anticipated 8K resolution TV sets will formally begin the second half of this year. WitsView, a division of TrendForce, reports that a Taiwanese panel maker is first to be approved by international TV brands as a supplier of 8K TV panels. TV brands hope that the market release of 8K TV sets will generate interests among consumers in the near future.

WitsView’s analysis finds that Chinese panel makers are using their enormous resources to massively expand their overall production capacity. Facing with this situation, Taiwanese panel makers have to push out novel products to show that they still have a technological edge over their Chinese rivals. They therefore have been staying ahead of foreign competitors in the development of 8K TV panels just as they were in the 4K race. Innolux, for instance, has its 65-inch 8K panels successfully approved by major international TV brands. The compatriot AU Optronics (AUO) has also scheduled to begin mass production of the same product in this year’s fourth quarter. Innolux and AUO’s competition in the 8K panel market will come head to head at Touch Taiwan 2016, a major display industry exhibition that will commence on August 24 in Taipei.

At the same time, South Korean and Chinese panel industries are making rapid progress in their 8K TV panel production. The two major South Korean panel makers respectively plan to release 65-inch flat-screen products and 98-inch curved-screen products for this resolution at the end of the year. The largest Chinese panel supplier BOE Technology (BOE) has also been very active in the 8K market. In addition to the 65-inch product, BOE will also introduce 8K TV panels of even larger sizes in order to capture a substantial market share.

Growth of 8K TV market depends on the availability of broadcast content

Most IC design companies currently do not offer system-on-chip (SOC) that specifically supports 8K panels. Most available solutions that turn broadcasting signals into 8K videos actually use 4K SOC that is augmented with a video processing technology known as motion estimation/motion compilation (MEMC). WitsView’s analysis further indicates that the adoption of 8K TVs will start to expand when the pace of content development matches the pace of hardware development. Currently, Japan appears to be the only country that is testing 8K TV broadcasts. Since this August, the country’s national public broadcaster NHK has started to air TV programs in 8K resolution as part of the preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Other regions around the world have yet to develop signal transmission infrastructure and content for 8K TV broadcasts. In sum, it is still too early to determine if the advanced resolution standard will be a significant force that drives revenue and capacity consumption for panel makers.