LG Display says it recorded accumulative sales of 100 million automotive displays in the first quarter of this year.

The area of all the displays the company has produced so far is equivalent to around 1.5 million m², or 200 football fields.

LG Display is providing provide its automotive displays to global automobile makers such as Daimler Benz, BMW, Hyundai Motors, Toyota, Honda, Tesla, GM, and more.

The company has been focusing on promoting the automotive display business as one of its future growth engines. It has grown the business with differentiated technologies, and is currently producing a wide range of automotive displays including a Center Information Display, and also cluster and RSE (Rear Seat Entertainment) displays.

LG Display plans to generate KRW 2 trillion in revenues in the automotive display business sector by 2021 through focusing on LTPS backplane-based high-resolution LCD panels as well as plastic OLED (POLED) displays which offer great design flexibility.

To that end, LG Display will start mass production of automotive POLED displays in the E5 production line, the company’s 6th Generation (1,500mm x 1,850mm) POLED display production line in Gumi, Korea, in the first half of this year. The needs for high-end automotive interiors are growing, driving the increasing demand for curved displays. POLED has been perceived as an optimal display solution for automobiles as it offers smooth and natural curves while maintaining the advantages of OLED such as infinite contrast ratio, wide viewing angles, and abundant and accurate color reproduction.

LG Display has been focusing on its investment and capabilities in making 5-inch and above size displays according to the trends that automotive displays are getting larger.

“The automotive display market is expanding as a variety of surfaces of vehicles are being replaced with displays,” said Jung-sik Shin, Senior Vice President and Head of Auto Sales Division at LG Display. He added, “We anticipate that the automotive display will be more widely utilized, internally and externally, in car designs once the autonomous vehicle era starts. Therefore, we will continually introduce innovative display products such as automotive rollable and transparent displays.”

LCD TV push

In related news, LG Display's mother company LG Electronics is moving to strengthen its leadership in the premium LCD TV market, amid
aggressive expansion by Chinese TV makers.

Although LG has been promoting its organic light-emitting diode TVs in recent years, the company still takes a major share of the LCD TV market. It plans to expand its market share and launches new lineups featuring upgraded technologies each year.

Out of the total of 218.8 million units of LCD TVs shipped globally last year, those by Korean TV makers LG and Samsung Electronics accounted for 67 million, or 30.6 percent, according to IHS Markit.

For the first time, Chinese TV makers outdid Korean companies with 31.2 percent of LCD TV shipments.

LG is highlighting its proprietary Nano Cell display technology and deep learning algorithm platform Deep ThinQ for its premium LCD TV lines.

The LG Nano Cell TV has fine particles of about 1 nanometers that precisely tune color waves on the LCD panel, which minimizes distortion in the accuracy of colors and picture quality at any viewing angle.

The latest model is equipped with the second generation of the Alpha 7 processor, which helps raise picture and sound quality.

In the second half of the year, LG will launch an 8K LCD TV model along with an 8K OLED TV.

The Nano Cell technology is optimal for 8K displays, and the company will expand launches of large-size LCD TVs over 70 inches throughout the year.