Wide color gamut flat panel displays are expected to grow from 3 percent in 2015 to 25 percent of the display market in terms of area by 2020, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of critical information and insight. Color gamut refers to the ability of a digital display to reproduce colors as they are seen by the naked eye.
With a rise in the use of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, smartphone displays constitute the majority of wide color gamut unit shipments; however, in terms of area, television displays will make up 52 percent of the wide color gamut display market in 2015 and 86 percent in 2020.
“Resolution and screen size are key factors in display technology evolution, but technical hurdles and technical gaps among panel makers have recently narrowed,” said Richard Son, senior analyst at IHS Technology. “Display manufacturers are, therefore, looking for emerging technologies to widen the color gamut of their displays and increase the high dynamic range of their products, in order to gain a competitive advantage in the market.”
According to the latest IHS Quantum Dot Display Technology and Market Report, the following three technologies are currently used to generate wide color gamut displays:
- OLED displays boast a color gamut reaching 100 percent of the National Television System Committee (NTSC) video standards, which is much higher than conventional LCD displays that only reach about 70 percent.
- Light-emitting diode (LED) display technology focuses on improving LED chips and color filters in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) to provide a color gamut between 80 percent and 90 percent of NTSC video standards.
- Quantum dot technology, including on-chip, on-edge, and on-surface types, offers a high color range, similar to OLED displays.
“Due to increasingly strong global competition, display makers are seeking to differentiate their products from those of their competitors,” Son said. “For some time now, display manufacturers have attempted to attain wider color gamut in their display products, but they were unable to find reliable, mainstream solutions to do so; however, with the advent of quantum dot technology and OLED, wide color gamut technologies have become much more common in the industry.”
