Electronic paper, also known as electronic ink screen, is a special display screen that can imitate the visual perception of printing and writing on paper. The product has the characteristics of bendable, consume less power, visual comfort, ultra-light and thin, rewritable, easy

(report producer/author: Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, Luo Siyuan, Yang Haiyan, Yuan Hang, Ning Keyu)

Core viewpoint:

A new display technology that is small and beautiful. Electronic paper, also known as electronic ink screen, is a special display screen that can imitate the visual perception of printing and writing on paper. The product has the characteristics of bendable, consume less power, visual comfort, ultra-light and thin, rewritable, easy to carry, and can maintain display when power is off. The main features are low power consumption and visual health. With the upgrading and iteration of technology, products have moved from paper-like substitution and low-power product applications to digitalization, and downstream applications have been continuously expanded. Currently, electronic paper is mainly used in retail electronic shelf labels (ESL) and e-book reader (E-Reader, including smart books, handwritten books, study books and other electronic paper reading and writing terminals). In the future, with the upgrading of technology, products will go from black and white to color, from text to pictures and then to videos, and the improvement of digitalization is expected to expand more scenarios for the industry. According to TrendForce's estimate, the global e-paper market size will be approximately US$4.65 billion in 2022, an annual increase of 48.1%, and will be expected to reach US$20.34 billion by 2026.

1.1, electronic paper: New commercial display technology

display according to the technology, mainly including OLED, LCD, LED, etc. Electronic paper is one of the new display technologies

1.2, electronic paper display features

, electronic paper is also called electronic ink screen, it is a special display screen that can imitate the visual perception of printing and writing on paper. This product has the characteristics of bendable, low power consumption, visual comfort, ultra-thin, rewritable, easy to carry, and can maintain display when power is off. Electronic paper is a bistable and reflective display technology. Reflective means that electronic paper does not require a backlight source at all. Like ordinary paper, it relies on ambient light source to reflect text and images into our eyes; bistable state means that electronic paper only needs to consume power when changing the picture. Even if the power supply is stopped, the picture will remain stationary but will not disappear.

1.3. E-paper development history

E-paper development history has actually lasted for more than 20 years, but the commercialization process is gradually accelerating, with the display effect from black and white to color, and the application field has expanded from electronic readers to supermarkets, retail, consumer electronics, office entertainment, aviation and travel, etc.

2.1, downstream application of electronic paper

electronic paper products application terminals are mainly divided into two categories: to B and to C, focusing on paper-like and low-power IoT markets. The largest application scenarios currently come from retail electronic shelf labels (ESLs) and e-book readers (E-Reader, including smart books, handwritten books, learning books and other electronic paper reading and writing terminals). To C-end applications mainly include e-paper readers, conference books, e-paper mobile phones, notebooks, monitors, etc., such as Amazon Kindle series readers, Hisense A7 5G reading mobile phone, Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2i dual-screen notebook, Dashang Paperlike 25.3-inch display and other products; to B-end applications are also the key areas of current application and development of electronic paper products, mainly including eight major application fields such as smart retail, smart education, smart medical care, smart office, smart transportation, smart logistics , smart civil aviation, and smart industry.

2.2. C-terminal: Electronic paper tablets are the main application

C-terminal electronic paper applications include tablets, mobile phones, monitors, word cards, etc. Among them, tablets are the most promising applications, mainly divided into three categories: readers, office books, and study books. Readers are still the main application of electronic paper, and study books are currently small in scale. Reader: Kindle announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market to a certain extent and dragged down the overall market size to improve, but with the replacement of other brands, it is expected to resume growth rate; e-paper handwritten books are upgraded products of e-book readers. Since 2017, the electronic paper handwritten books market has grown rapidly for five consecutive years. In 2021, the global market shipments have exceeded 1.2 million units, and the annual compound growth rate of global shipments in the past three years has reached about 70%; office books: the growth rate has increased rapidly, and it has begun to gradually divert the reader market capacity left by Kindle after the exit.

2.3, C-terminal: 2022 is the first year of electronic paper flat panels, and Chinese brands have gradually taken over the market dominance

In 2022, Chinese brands have intensively released new products. Huawei : the first electronic paper tablet MatePad Paper, the advantage is to integrate chips, Hongmeng system, stylus , etc. to improve the electronic interactive experience; Hanwang : E-paper N10, removes the traditional capacitor touch layer and light guide plate , a simple product that meets the urgent needs; Evernote: Impression Intelligent Printing EverPaper, benchmarking products are iFLYTEK X2, ink case W7; the highlight is to link with E-note App to improve handwriting comfort; Bigme: The new product inkNote, equipped with 8M and 5M front and rear cameras, is the world's first electronic paper smart office book that supports dual cameras.

2.4, B-side: Electronic paper tags enter a variety of new retail scenarios

B-side electronic paper applications mainly include tags, digital signs, etc. The main advantage is that there is no need to deploy power lines when using it. Only using buttons. Battery can achieve battery life of more than 5-7 years, among which electronic paper tags are the core application. Easy to realize standardization: the basic display function of electronic paper labels is to show customers the name, price and other graphics and texts of the product to customers. Price tags with a higher degree of intelligence can also make real-time dynamic adjustments to product prices to collect and manage product data; the price drop is penetration rate core factors to improve: Taking the 2.13-inch electronic price tag as an example, its single-piece price is about 130 yuan in 2016, and it is expected that the unit price will drop to 20 yuan in 2022.

2.5, other potential applications: automobiles and mobile phones

Automobile: 2022 CES exhibition BMW Group released the world's first color-changing concept car completely wrapped in electronic paper - iX Flow, which uses E Ink Prism color-changing electronic paper to wrap the body. This electronic paper film technology was originally developed for the field of architecture and design. The intelligent design algorithm of BMW and E Ink's color-changing electronic paper film technology can enable BMW iX Flow's body appearance color to change color in a dynamic flow manner; E Ink can design body patterns and materials through program code, providing customized color-changing services for the body.

3.1. Electronic paper industry chain

Upstream: including substrates, electronic ink films, DDICs, FPCs, transparent protective films and edge sealing glues. The core raw material is electronic ink films. Midstream: Applied to terminal-produced electronic paper modules, as well as wireless transmission chips and batteries (or none) attached to the display module. Downstream: Electronic paper display product integrator, which mainly applies electronic paper display modules to terminal products. In 2021, the market size of electronic paper complete machine products exceeded US$4 billion, driving upstream and downstream output value to exceed 100 billion yuan.

3.2. Paper film: a key material for the expansion of upstream and downstream production capacity

Currently, seven core technologies of electronic paper films: microcapsule electrophoresis, microcup electrophoresis, electronic powder fluid, cholesterol liquid crystal, microelectromechanical systems, electromoisturization, electrochromic (microcapsule electrophoresis is the absolute mainstream, cholesterol liquid crystal commercialization is accelerated, and most others are in the R&D stage).

microcapsules electrophoresis: Taiwan E-lnk Yuantai Technology , Guangzhou Aoyi Technology Co., Ltd., etc., among which Sun Yat-sen University cooperates with Guangzhou Aoyi; cholesterol liquid crystal: Kent, United States Display, Japan Fujitsu , Japan Fuji Xerox , Taiwan Institute of Technology has the most patents; micro cup electrophoresis: AUO launched after taking over SIPIX, Taiwan Institute of Technology is also conducting related technical cooperation with SiPix; electronic powder fluid: Delta Electric and Bridgestone production; micro-electromechanical system (MEMS): Qualcomm , mostly used in small mobile communication systems, including smart phones and satellite navigation; electromotor technology: Liquavista, South China Normal University and Taiwan Jiaotong University; electrochromic: Gentex leads, with advantages in instrument display, outdoor advertising, static display and other fields.

3.3. Driver IC: From black and white to color, from single to diversified brings more upgrade demand

Taiwan manufacturers absolutely dominate: because Yuantai's high market share is mostly Taiwanese manufacturers in China, mainland manufacturers have gradually begun to participate in recent years. Yuantai Technology plans to expand its production capacity by 4 times in the future, bringing the demand for driver IC supporting (4 new production lines are expected to be completed in 2023, and 6 new lines are reserved). With the increase in participation of terminal manufacturers in mainland China, local IC factories are expected to enter the supply chain; integrating chips is a development trend: With the improvement of functional requirements, currently electronic paper ICs need to integrate driver ICs, T-Con, PMICs, etc., and meet the technical requirements of color and low power consumption. Some also need to integrate touch, computing, wireless transmission and other functions.

3.4, SoC: As application scenarios extend, performance optimization and function expansion

Because most electronic paper application scenarios are relatively simple, the IC function can be turned on and off (kine driver IC), but if you want to meet the rich functions of devices such as high refresh rate, smooth operation, low power consumption, and low latency handwriting, you need to use SoC (or Android system). Taking electronic paper tablet products as an example, among mainland Chinese manufacturers, Kirin 820E is mainly used in corporate tablet terminals, mid-range mobile phones, etc., and has become a relatively mature commercial chip. Others such as Qualcomm 662 and MTK8768 are both the first gradient, and RK3588 (launched in 2021) are also highly competitive; Huben T610, RK3566, Quanzhi B300, etc. are mainly used in relatively low-end mobile phones, tablets, commercial all-in-one machines, smart POS machines and other fields; if it only supports reading and closed systems, it is relatively simple, and Meiman PX1908, i.MX6, etc. can meet it.

3.5. Wireless connection chip: an important technical carrier of electronic paper tags

electronic price tag field. The electronic shelf tags placed on the shelves are mainly connected to the product information database of the application company through the network to form a complete electronic price tag system. Wireless connection chips (also called transmission chips) are essential. They usually have requirements for transmission technology such as high data security, low power consumption, low communication module cost and stable transmission distance. Electronic price tags are usually transmitted using communication protocols (2.4G frequency band private protocol: internationally universal free frequency band, Bluetooth , ZigBee, Thread and other protocols are all transmitted based on this frequency band. 2.4GHz generally refers to wireless communication with a frequency band in 2.405-2.485GHz) + platform to achieve one-click output and change information.

3.6. Module: Restrained from the upstream, but benefiting from the expansion of market size

The internal structure of the electronic paper display module is that electronic ink is coated on a layer of plastic film and then pasted on a TFT panel, and pixel graphics need to be formed through the driver IC control. According to ePaper Insight data, the global market size of electronic paper display module products in 2020 was about US$800 million, and the proportion of electronic price tags, electronic paper readers and notepads in the top three application fields exceeded 95%. According to QYR statistics and forecasts, the global market sales of electronic paper mold groups in 2021 will reach US$1.4 billion, and is expected to reach US$7.6 billion in 2028, with a CAGR of 26.1% from 2022 to 2028.

report excerpt:

(This article is for reference only and does not represent any of our investment advice. If you need to use relevant information, please refer to the original report.)

Selected report source: [Future Think Tank]