45% of smartphones will use full-screen designs in 2018 - Research

According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, full-screen smartphones will become the trend in the market this year.

It expects that the penetration rate of full-screen models in the smartphones will rise rapidly to 44.6% in 2018, and reach 92.1% in 2021.

MWC 2018 has concluded and major smartphone vendors at the event have unveiled their smartphone lineup for this year, revealing the development trends in smartphone technology and specifications.

This includes narrower bezels and notch designs, bringing about solutions of under-display fingerprint sensor and applications combining camera modules and facial recognition.

WitsView research director Boyce Fan says that full-screen smartphones have become the focus of market since 2017.

The new models launched by Samsung and Apple have led to designs of higher screen-to-body ratio.

Smartphone brands will be changing the overall appearance of their devices as a way to upgrade hardware specifications, especially in the situation that smartphone market goes saturated and replacement purchases decrease.

IEven Sony, who tends to be more conservative, has officially launched its full-screen flagship model in MWC this year.

Notch design is another focus for vendors this year since Apple released iPhone X with notch design and 3D facial recognition in 2017.

Some panel makers are actively purchasing panel cutting equipment to meet the different needs of clients in product development.

"The positioning and penetration of products are influenced by patent issues of notch design, consumers' acceptance of it, as well as the manufacturing difficulty and derivative costs of notch design", says Fan.

WitsView estimates that the penetration rate of models with notch design in all smartphones will be 15.7% in 2018 and 26.9% in 2021.

Fan also points out that the life cycle of 4G telecommunication standard has entered the middle and final stages and that the market has shifted the focus to emerging 5G technology.

The 5G standard has significant improvements in bandwidth and internet speed, indicating the coming age of all-connected.