According to London-based IHS Markit, an information and analysis firm, there’s big growth in the near future for automotive display systems. The firm is predicting a 17 percent jump in such systems in 2017 alone.
In the aptly titled report “Automotive Display Systems Forecast”, IHS Markit is guessing that revenue for center stacks, instrument clusters, and head-up displays will be more than $20.8 billion in 2022. For reference, it was only $9.2 billion five years ago.
Heads-up displays are a fairly small part of that whole segment, but it's the segment that is expected to have the most growth. What was once a gimmick may become the mainstream as the technology is fine-tuned and perfected. The world's drivers are going to need head-up displays to keep their eyes on the road...and off of the huge screens in our center stacks.
Automotive technology analyst Brian Rhodes says this predicted growth comes from two main factors. "First are simple volume increases, with more vehicles adding new displays to the instrument cluster and center stack, along with head-up display deployments becoming more common," he said. "The second area of growth is in the technology value itself, as these displays are becoming larger and more capable-and therefore more expensive."
So, not only will screens in car interiors become more common, but they’re going to get bigger and fancier than they are now. Some see these infotainment systems as gimmicks or fads, but the market is showing otherwise. We might be able to expect big, Internet-connected screens to come standard on most base-model, entry-level cars in just a few years.