India's flat panel displays market to more than treble to $18.9 billion by 2025: ICEA

A surge in demand for consumer durables, especially smartphones, is likely to more than treble India's market for flat panel displays from $5.4 billion in 2020 to nearly $19 billion by 2025, a report by electronics association ICEA has said.

The industry body has said the cumulative market in the next 5 years was around $60 billion which is waiting to be tapped by domestic industry. Though India has steadily grown into a leading consumer market for display-centric products, it does not currently have a local display manufacturing industry and all display components have to be imported from overseas suppliers.

"We (India) currently consume 7-8 per cent of the global display production in India primarily for use in mobile, TV and IT hardware. With our current emphasis on electronic manufacturing in India and incentives to trigger this industrial sector, the demand for displays will increase multi-fold," said Pankaj Mohindroo, Chairman, India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA). "There is no display fab in India today and this is the right time that we direct our focus towards building this strategic core industry in India."

Globally, the market for flat panel displays was valued at $100 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow over $125 billion in revenues by 2024. The mobile phone and TV product segments account for greater than 65 per cent of the industry revenues while notebooks, monitors, tablets, automotive and other applications account for the rest. India has already established a substantial market-pull for display components and this market pull is accelerating to be a substantial fraction of the global display industry. The creation of an India-based display industry will require the confluence of market-pull, capital and know-how, ICEA says.

"A coherent national policy is required to mobilize private sector companies to bring together capital and knowhow to establish state-of-the-art display Fabs. The national policy should extend government support towards providing financial incentives to display makers and display supply chain companies who agree to make substantial investments under the private-public partnerships. He also invited the Large Indian Corporates to come forward and put their weight behind to establish this strategic industry in India," said Mohindroo.

According to ICEA, there is a potential for India to exploit export opportunities alone of upto $11 billion per year by 2025. On top of this, by reducing imports for the domestic market, it is estimated that the industry can create 200,000 new jobs in the sector.

"Displays are the windows to the digital world of data. They make it possible for data to be visualized in a human-readable form. The display component industry is greater than USD 100 billion in size and it has spawned substantially larger leveraged industries that manufacture and sell display-centric electronic products," said Dr G Rajeswaran, Director & CEO, Grantwood Technologies. "Using our pioneering experience in the display industry over the past three decades, we are proposing a strategy, a plan-of-action and some key recommendations to future stakeholders in India."

ALSO READ: New investment projects dip 68% in FY21; recovery unlikely in June quarter: CARE Ratings

ALSO READ: Gautam Adani becomes second richest Asian, overtakes China's Zhong Shanshan