According to WitsView, a division of the TrendForce (www.trendforce) research group, full-screen smartphones will become the trend in market this year. The pursuit of narrower bezels and notch designs has emerged, bringing about solutions of under-display fingerprint sensor and applications combining camera modules and facial recognition.

According to Boyce Fan, research director of WitsView, full-screen smartphones have become the focus of market since 2017. The new models launched by Apple and Samsung 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.

In addition to Samsung, LG Electronic and many Chinese brands who already have active layout, even Sony, who tends to be more conservative, has officially launched its full-screen flagship model in MWC this year. WitsView 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.

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,” said Fan. Therefore, 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.