HTC announced on September 21 that the company’s R&D and engineering unit that is responsible for Google’s Pixel smartphones will be officially joining Google. This deal to acquire of HTC’s talents and assets related to smartphone manufacturing is worth a total of US$1.1 billion. Below is a brief analysis of this deal by TrendForce and a table showing this year’s quarterly production volumes of Google and HTC branded smartphones. Hopefully, our research will be useful to you as a reference should you decide to report on this event.
Trends in the display industry are heavily influenced by the developments in the consumer electronics markets, and this is seen in the rapid growth of the OLED panel market due to the rising demand from smartphone and TV brands. In its recent analyses of the panel market by technology, WitsView, a division of TrendForce, finds that the market share of OLED in the small size bracket continues to grow at the expense of LCD’s market share. Furthermore, WitsView anticipates OLED’s representation in the smartphone market will increase substantially following the release of iPhone X. With Apple expected to support this display technology in the future, the percentage of OLED models in the total annual smartphone shipments worldwide is projected to climb from 28% this year to 33% in 2018.
China will again take the leading share of the total annual photovoltaic (PV) demand worldwide in 2017, says the latest Gold Member Solar Report by EnergyTrend, a division of TrendForce. China’s solar demand for this year has surpassed earlier expectations due to the surging installations of distributed PV systems. With China’s contribution, the annual global PV demand is also projected to cross the 100-gigawatt mark for the first time in 2017, coming to a 100.4 gigawatts. Compared with 2016, this year’s global PV demand will advance by about 26%. As the Chinese government continues to support its domestic solar sector, the annual global PV demand is expected to top 100 gigawatts through to 2019.
In anticipation of Apple unveiling its 10th anniversary iPhone models, the global market intelligence firm TrendForce would like to share with you some of our latest data on the smartphone market.
Major technology companies have been developing solutions and platforms for 3D sensing, which is expected to be featured on the upcoming iPhone devices. Market intelligence TrendForce anticipates that from 2017 onward, the market for 3D sensing solutions used in mobile devices will witness leaping growth. The total value of the global market for 3D sensing modules used in mobile devices is estimated to reach US$1.5 billion in 2017 and is forecast to grow at a massive CAGR of 209% to around US$14 billion in 2020. Note that the 3D sensing module that is being discussed includes IR transmitter and receiver components.