Rising demand for LCDs, PDPs, and OLEDs has spurred the growth of the display driver ICs (DDI) industry. According to Gartner Dataquest, the volume of DDIs market worldwide will rise from $6.6 billion in 2004 to $12.6 billion in 2008, with about 18 percent CAGR. According to the research firm, Samsung Electronics heads the ranking of this sector with a market share of nearly 19 percent, followed by Renesas Technology (15 percent) and NEC Electronics (14 percent).
In the small- and mediumsized LDIs sector, STN-LCD ICs are making way for either TFTLCDs or OLEDs ICs. According to DisplaySearch, the percentage of TFT-LCD driver ICs used in cellular phones is about 54 percent, versus that of STN-LCD ICs (34 percent). As the demand for highresolution color main/sub display has been rising, the competition between LDI companies is getting fierce.
Samsung, Magnachip Semiconductor, and LG Electronics are entrenching themselves in the LDI market with highly competitive strategies, while small- and medium companies, such as TomatoLSI, Displaychips, TLI, and Leadis Technology are aggressively pursuing the latest advanced technology.
Samsung recently developed MIE (mobile image enhancement) technology for mobile display applications. The MIE technology applies an algorithm in a different way keeping up with input images, so that it allows for escalating display brightness up to 30 percent, as well as improving image quality by optimizing the grayscales of LCD pixels. “We will lead high resolution mobile display era by applying MIE technology into LDIs for various handsets,” says Kim Jin Tae, managing director of Samsung System LSI Division.
Meanwhile, Magnachip has built additional post-processing lines for DDIs, including LDIs, at its Gumi fab. In early 2005, the company acquired a Japanese DDI design company to obtain current technology.
In contrast, for local small- and medium-sized fabless DDI companies, much of the concern over the past few years has centered on competing with global players such as Samsung, Renesas, Sharp, Magnachip, and LG.
Indeed, Korea’s handset makers, including Samsung, cannot afford to produce all LDIs for their various types ofdisplays, thereby expanding the niche market for such devices. However, Korean companies face the daunting challenge of having to develop new and advanced technologies or risk being overtaken by other global manufacturers.
TomatoLSI is one such company that is leading the way. The fabless company developed TFT-LCD LDIs earlier than any other company and announced the world’s first 0.18 um node based LDIs. Now, the company is all set to expand its product lines to LTPS and OLED driver ICs, diversifying set applications, and producing various products for high-end applications. In addition it is developing memory compression technology including 1T SRAM Shrink methodology.
Displaychips also announced the world’s first MPE-CSTN (moving picture enhancement CSTN). The company is currently developing field sequential LCD driver ICs, MPE-CSTN LCD driver ICs integrating movingpictures acceleration functions, and QCIF+ (176x220) MPECSTN LCD ICs.
Despite all these developments, fabless companies still face a lot of difficulties in trying to secure stable fab capacity. “Without having stable fab capacity, it’s not easy to offer LDIs during shortage period. We need to learn something from Taiwan. Taiwan government has employed a policy to control and supervise fab capacity for their fabless companies,” says S.Y. Hong, president and CEO of TomatoLSI. Lee Won Kee, president and CEO of Displaychips agrees, “Korea needs to develop its foundry industry for fabless companies, and should build strategic relationship between foundry and fabless.”
Top 10 companies’ revenue from shipments of LCD drivers worldwide (US$mn).
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