To improve their margins, panel makers are developing solutions to simplify product design. Gate-on-Array (GOA) is a thin-film transistor (TFT) technology that is gradually being adopted in place of the conventional backplane design for LCD panels.
WitsView, a division of TrendForce, has found the adoption of GOA has been widespread. The technology is especially gaining momentum in the LCD TV panel market. The latest analysis by WitsView forecasts that the penetration of GOA in the LCD TV panel market will exceed 50% in the second half of this year.
According to WitsView, GOA has already been incorporated into the design of the IT and smartphone panels for some time, but this solution just began to make rapid inroads in the TV panel market around the second half of 2015. The GOA design can effectively cut cost by eliminating the need for Gate IC components that are used to switch the backplane transistors on or off.
Using a 55-inch LCD TV panel as an example, the traditional TFT-LCD design would require four and eight Gate ICs respectively for FHD and 4K resolutions. The GOA design by contrast would require none for the same size panel for both resolution specs. The absence of the Gate ICs would in turn bring down the production cost by 2~3%. Additionally, removing Gate IC allows the left and right borders of a display to become thinner. GOA panels therefore can be used to develop a variety of narrow-bezel or bezel-less display systems.
South Korean panel makers are more mature in the development of the GOA solutions, says WitsView. Currently, all of their new panel products in sizes 65 inches and under are based on the GOA design. While Taiwanese and Chinese panel makers are behind in progress, they are planning to start applying this technology to mass-volume products (e.g. 32-, 40- and 50-inch panels) in the second half of this year.
The widespread adoption of GOA in the display industry has dampened the earlier optimism of IC manufacturers about 4K TVs becoming mainstream. The initial expectation from the IC industry was that display application products would boost the overall revenue and shipments because the IC usage volume for an LCD panel was supposed to grow in correlation with the increase in resolution. GOA, however, has challenged this assumption.
