Foldable screen mobile phones promote display technology innovation LTPS and LTPO is expected to exceed 60%

 TrendForce’s latest research on display backplanes shows that OLED has become the mainstream display technology for smartphones, and will make the penetration rate of mid-to-high-end backplane technologies such as LTPS and LTPO in the smartphone market close to 57% in 2024; in 2025, due to improved yield and effective cost control, the penetration rate is expected to challenge 60%.

Since Apple introduced the retina screen into the iPhone, the industry’s requirements for mobile phone screen resolution have continued to increase. Major manufacturers have successively developed low-temperature polycrystalline silicon LTPS backplane technology, which is now very mature.

LTPS has high electron mobility, can provide faster switching speeds and higher resolution, and can meet the display requirements of high-end mobile phones.

However, high electron mobility also leads to large LTPS leakage current, which cannot support low-frequency dynamic refresh adjustment, resulting in higher overall power consumption.

Currently, most flagship mobile phones use low-temperature polycrystalline oxide LTPO backplane technology, and folding screen mobile phones with larger screen sizes can use LTPO to achieve the effect of screen segmentation and different refresh rates, taking into account screen multi-tasking mode and energy-saving effects.

However, since the production process of LTPO requires stacking more layers, its process is complex and the manufacturing cost is higher than LTPS.

In addition, the oxide semiconductor backplane technology commonly used in smartphone screens mainly uses materials such as zinc oxide or indium gallium oxide.

This technology is also commonly used in high-end displays, such as Apple’s mid-sized products such as the iPad and Macbook series, and Oxide has a low leakage current, which will be beneficial for future applications in transparent displays.

Currently, when panel manufacturers are preparing new AMOLED panel production capacity, they are expected to give priority to the use of Oxide or LTPO high-end backplane technology to meet the specification requirements of different brands.