Fully digital screens are replacing speedometers and dials in vehicles, making industry leader Japan Display Inc optimistic about boosting sales to global automakers.
While most new models usually have a center information panel for maps, entertainment and other functions, manufacturers are also increasingly replacing the dashboard facing the driver with a flat screen.
Look inside the latest BMW or Mercedes-Benz, chances are Japan Display made the panel.
Replacing instrument clusters with screens is challenging, because they need to be more reliable and withstand swings in temperature, while providing critical information for the driver.
That also makes them more expensive and lets display suppliers demand higher margins, making them an attractive enterprise.
Japan Display, the world’s biggest supplier of car panels, is betting that the shift to electric vehicles would make screens the key selling point for any car, as drivers pay more attention to the interior aesthetics of vehicles than what is under the hood.
“It used to be all about the engine — how many cylinders, how much horse power, the sound of it — but with electric vehicles that’s all gone,” Japan Display automotive business head Holger Gerkens said in an interview. “How do you create attraction? You can do a lot with displays.”
Digital dashboards also offer advantages for drivers, for example changing the style and amount of information for different driving modes, making maps more prominent when needed.
For now, they are mostly used in high-end cars made by Audi, Mercedes-Benz and some supercar manufacturers.
Japan Display’s automotive operations last fiscal year generated ￥100 billion (US$904 million) in revenue, about 14 percent of its total. It forecasts that sales are to grow 40 percent by March 2020.
The company, which already supplies about 30 percent of the European car market, is expanding in the US, Japan and China, Gerkens said.
The company controlled 19 percent of the US$6.7 billion global market for automotive displays last year, according to IHS Markit. LG Display Co was second with 14 percent.
Sluggish smartphone sales, which make up about 80 percent of revenue, are also behind the firm’s bid to increase automotive sales. In addition, Apple Inc, the company’s biggest customer, is shifting to next-generation OLED displays, which Japan Display does not produce in mass quantities.
Adoption of OLEDs in cars would probably take longer. Unlike liquid-crystal displays, OLED pixels can glow on their own and do not require a backlight, which makes them thinner and more energy efficient.
These are significant advantages when it comes to smartphones, but automakers are likely to be more concerned with OLED’s limited lifetime and considerably higher price, Gerkens said.
“We are moving away from flat rectangular-shaped displays,” Gerkens said. “The future will be more and more design driven.”
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